George Gurley

1987-1989

The Observer is born. I was still in college. In the summer I interned at CV (Career Vision) magazine, which was started by my then-stepfather, Shelby Bryan, and Marian Salzman, the editor in chief. I fact-checked and interviewed Frank Zappa and Mary Stuart Masterson. Also did some caddying and drinking. No interaction with The New York Observer.

I first heard about The New York Observer. “It’s really good, everyone’s reading it,” my mother said. I picked up a copy, saw the photo on the cover (a snow-covered tree by the Central Park bandshell?) and thought, “Nah, not for me,” not realizing that inside were great columns by the likes of Michael Thomas, Sidney Zion, Robin Pogrebin, Joe Conason, Terry Golway, Charles Bagli and Richard Brookhiser.

While thumbing through a New York magazine in a doctor’s office, I stumbled upon an article about The Observer’s owner, Arthur Carter, who had just hired a new editor, Graydon Carter. “Hmmm,” I thought, “interesting.”

It was February, and I was an assistant editor at Avenue, a society magazine. After being put on probation for insubordination and leaving $400,000 worth of goodies unattended in the hallway, I started filling in for the receptionist during her lunch breaks. That’s when I started reading The New York Observer. The paper looked different. Better. One day I was utterly engrossed in a profile of Charlie Rose by Elissa Schappell when Avenue’s managing editor walked by and said, “Good paper!” He fired me four months later.

Still unemployed. In March, Joanne Corson, a good friend from Kansas University who was working in production at The Observer, told managing editor Lauren Ramsby that she knew a guy who loved the paper. Editor in chief Susan Morrison interviewed me. I said I’d seen her on Charlie Rose, loved Spy magazine and fact-checking. I showed her my Q&As with William Burroughs and Tom Wolfe. Ms. Morrison has said she doesn’t remember hiring me. But she did.

I barely said a word the first three weeks. Hid behind my glasses. Was nervous, terrified at being around so many brainiacs, all Harvard grads crammed in a tight space on the fourth floor of a townhouse. I just knew they were going to out me as a creepy weirdo,
in over his head, not Observer material, and then show me the door. They kept looking at me like, “Who is this guy? What’s he doing here? Who hired him?”

On a Tuesday afternoon, media columnist Jim Windolf was on a tight deadline and taking a quick cig break on the roof. “Oh hey, George,” he said, then returned to whatever he was reading. It was the first time anyone there had said my name.

I discovered a way to be useful and ingratiate myself: fetch coffee at Bodum and milkshakes at Viand on Madison Avenue. I’d go around the office and take as many as 15 very specific orders and often foot the bill. Then sit alone on the staircase and eat a cheeseburger.

A month into the internship, I got a juicy tip from my then-stepfather, and Peter Stevenson wrote it up in the Transom column. Suddenly I was legit-ish and maybe worth the $50 a week after all.

I covered community board meetings all over the city. Parks Commissioner Henry Stern was a quote machine. “We should not be overwhelmed with this utopian, bucolic fantasy that the East River is the Mississippi, with Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer rafting by,” he told me at Board 8’s May 19 meeting.

At another in Washington Heights, I took notes as Board 12 chair Maria Luna, ignoring protests, told a tragic Fourth of July story about a neighborhood cat that was placed in a mailbox with various explosives. At yet another, I asked an old man to step outside and fight me. Don’t recall why. Do recall telling a fellow intern about it (Warren St. John? Tom Hudson? Rob Speyer? Dan Cogan?), and the legend spread.

But it worked to my advantage, because everyone realized there was a nut on the premises who could provide some laughs.

John Homans was my first editor. Once he and some other higher-ups were going out, and he told me to “hold the fort.” That felt really good. I was part of the team. Mr. Homans saw some potential in me. He was impressed by my prediction that Beavis and Butt-head would be a huge phenomenon. “But what are you going to DO, George?” he kept saying, meaning with my life. He was trying to light a fire under my ass.

I took the work seriously, did some beyond-the-call-of-duty research for staff writers like Rich Cohen and Mark Lasswell, who had me make calls for his editorial blasting Rollerbladers in Central Park (“sorry, ‘inline skaters,’” he wrote).

Mostly I fact-checked. Candace Bushnell’s first article in The Observer? I checked that. I used to call Taki on his yacht or in Gstaad. “Come over for a drink sometime,” he said. (Years later, he admired my fiancée at Swifty’s.) I learned from the great Terry Golway what “Foggy Bottom” meant. I was there when Frank DiGiacomo showed up on his first day on the job after being hired away from Page Six. His Rolodex was the size of a gun safe, and when he wasn’t there, it was always locked. Moira Hodgson’s restaurant reviews, Andrew Sarris, Hilton Kramer, Robin Pobregin, Tony Hendra, Anne Roiphe, Ralph Gardner’s Crime Blotter.

When one regular contributor was suspected of taking some liberties with a quote, Mr. Homans ordered me to give him a hard time. “Look, I believe you, but just play me the tape,” I told the young reporter.

“I swear, it got busted—I mean I taped over it!”

I invented a dance that would make my co-workers laugh, and was thrilled to be christened “Clownboy”—a nickname meant acceptance—and rewarded for my buffoonery: “Hey Clownboy! Do the clown dance!”

And I would. Why? Because I was in love with The Observer. I’d found my Cheers, and I never wanted to leave. I looked with pride at The Observer’s phone booth ads around Manhattan. A few were framed up on the wall of the spiral staircase: “Murders, fires, corruption, power, sex ...” one began. “And that’s just the wine column.” And: “You could survive without reading our paper. You could also survive in Ohio.”

I remember riding up on the elevator with Charlie Bagli and making the case that The Observer was the only paper you really needed. Screw all the others. Mr. Bagli informed me that The New York Times was also a “must-read.”

Not everyone at The Observer was a Clownboy fan. Maybe one-third of the editorial staff. But by my sixth month, I felt indispensable, and made it clear that if I didn’t get a raise, I would walk. I walked.

Then I was evicted from my sublet for leaving the water running in the tub and destroying the bathroom. I was broke. My parents said, “No more handouts, no more free lunch.” They suggested I become a paralegal.

Under some pressure from Clownboy fans (Stevenson, DiGiacomo, Windolf), Susan Morrison made a call and I was hired as a freelance fact-checker at Spy magazine—not a happy place to be by this time. Still, I had the pleasure of fact-checking Joe Queenan’s brilliant series of things everyone’s supposed to like but actually suck (the Civil War, jazz). And I got to know future star TV writers and producers like Tim Long (Letterman, The Simpsons), Eric Zicklin (Frasier, Dharma & Greg) and Louis Theroux (Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends). I lasted three months at Spy and had to threaten to sue to get paid $600.

A week didn’t go by that I didn’t show up at The Observer to fetch coffee. I also curried favor by mailing crazy, mildly amusing letters, some detailing my sexual fantasies about famous “editrixes.” Recently I dug up some copies from “The Gurley File,” rough drafts that are so awful, disgusting, excruciatingly embarrassing, not the slightest bit amusing, worthless and depressing that I am going to burn them. I should be shot for writing, let alone mailing, those letters to The Observer.

Next, I was hired as a fact-checker at The New Yorker. I decided this was my calling. Forget writing. I’ll do this for the rest of my life. There was a big problem, though: I didn’t fit in with the other checkers, who were all Yale, Harvard, Harvard Law and spoke six languages. It was cool, though, seeing legends like Tina Brown (so fucking hot), John Updike and Joseph Mitchell in the hallway.

My first mistake: getting Roger Angell on the horn and calling him “Mr. Ann-gell.” Then asking Calvin Trillin if some of the lines in his Shouts and Murmurs were jokes. He kept repeating, “Joke ... joke ... joke.” He was nice about it, unlike Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, who kept snapping “critical commonplace” at me.

After I challenged some perfectly legal, slightly cleaned-up quotes in a “Talk of the Town” piece on Saul Bellow (an “a” to an “an,” a “that” to a “this”), its author asked for my name. He didn’t want to be pals.

Soon I was working two days a week as the movie review fact-checker. Fine by me! Thrilled to do that for decades. Getting paid to see screenings of Reality Bites, Wyatt Earp, The Crow and give changes to Anthony Lane and Terrence Rafferty, Pauline Kael’s successors? Wait—this was a demotion? Ha!

With a penlight in one hand and a pencil in the other, I’d tick off lines of dialogue, kick back and enjoy the rest of the flick. Reviewer Joel Siegel once yelled at me for shuffling galley pages in the middle of Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. Jeez, dude, just trying to do my job.

While going over Mr. Lane’s review of the movie Speed, he said “Point taken” a few times, and it didn’t sound so chummy.

So then it was down to one day a week. Then once in a while.

I started spending more time at The Observer and finally met the new editor, Peter W. Kaplan. He told me about Esquire in the ’60s and a famous George Lois cover, and then he had to go back to work. But it was implied that I’d be working there someday.

The last piece I checked at The New Yorker was a short story about a serial killer. During my research, I discovered that it was, to some extent, a fictionalized treatment of the real Jeffrey Dahmer story. After devouring books on the grisly subject and finding about 50 similarities (street names, killing techniques, etc.), I gave my heavily annotated galley to an editor, who passed it on to the managing editor and a lawyer, and then a memo was drafted and sent to Tina Brown.

Changes were made. But I thought readers should know that this story had been inspired by actual events. I was so outraged that I made sarcastic comments in the margin of my galley, which was sent to the famous author, Joyce Carol Oates. Well, I figured that was the end of my career at The New Yorker, so I leaked the memo to The Observer, and they ran an item. That scored me some points, but no job.

I fact-checked at a dozen publications, among them Allure, Interview, Rolling Stone, House Beautiful—where I lasted two days. I’d just been rejected from Fordham business school, and a move back to Kansas was in the cards. If I was lucky, the Free State Brewery would rehire me as a dishwasher. Then, miraculously, I was hired as a full-time fact-checker at GQ. That summer, Mr. Windolf told me (on the corner of Lexington and 62nd Street) that he was starting a new column for shorter pieces called The New York World, and asked me to send him ideas.

On a Tuesday in August, I took the Jitney to East Hampton to see Tom Wolfe read from his novel-in-progress, The Mayflies (later retitled A Man in Full). I was the only journalist there, and my piece made the front page of The Observer. All I wanted to do in life was make that happen again.

Next I enjoyed a private chat with Allen Ginsberg, who held forth on Cézanne and the lovemaking style of William Burroughs. Alone in a basement with Kate Moss, the two of us played word association. When I said “Frying pan,” she said “Sausages.” When I said “Giuliani,” she said, “Who’s that?”

For an unassigned piece (which never ran) about a witch war, I hung out with a dozen witches and a Satanist. During a two-hour interview with Drew Barrymore’s mother, Jaid, then 50, she said she loved the missionary position and “Tarzan and Jane.” “As in doggy style,” she explained. “I feel like Jane when he is overwhelming me, taking me from behind. I like that. It’s nice.”

At the Wetlands music venue, I covered an event promoting a rare, unreleased album by Blind Melon. Everyone there missed the lead singer, who had recently died from a cocaine overdose. “Fuck MTV,” said a guy sucking on a fat joint. “They killed Blind Melon.” At the end of the item, I mentioned that the band was looking for a new lead singer, and gave the address in Hermosa Beach to which those interested could send an audition tape.

One night I crashed three parties with literary man-about-town C.S. Ledbetter III. First we chewed the fat with NBC chief Robert Wright at the Rainbow Room. Then at Maxim’s, we hobnobbed with William F. Buckley, Morley Safer, Jane Pauley, Garry Trudeau and Kurt Andersen. Then at Gagosian Gallery, we met two lovely Vogue assistants, Francesca Stratton and Emily Lyon, and the four of us piled into a cab and winged down Fifth Avenue.

Another night, C.S. and I made time with the models Bridget Hall and Christy Turlington. Another night, we shared a table with Pia Zadora at Sardi’s. Another night, we went on a double date with Sydney Biddle Barrows (the Mayflower Madam) and Baroness Sheri De Borchgrave (author of A Dangerous Liaison). Tom Wolfe compared us to Addison and Steele.

Outside 350 Madison, the former Condé Nast building, a flier distributor got in my personal space and waved his flier in my face. I cursed at him and he laughed. I had an idea: why not interview this guy and make a case that he was the best flier distributor in the city? The guy agreed, we chatted for 10 minutes, then I wrote the item, faxed it—FAXED IT—over to Mr. Windolf. It was published a few days later, and was so good that I was invited to an Observer drinks party at the bar Chelsea Commons. Peter Kaplan, feeding bills into the jukebox, confirmed that it was a very good item. I would learn over the next dozen years working for the great man that he does not dole out praise promiscuously.

For my first long Observer piece, I interviewed a hundred New Yorkers during working hours and asked them, “Why Aren’t You at Work?” At one point, making the rounds at Barnes & Noble, I became so bored with a young man’s feeble excuses that I asked him to keep talking into my tape recorder while I went to get a bagel. This interviewing technique I invented would soon be ripped off by other journalists—as would the story idea itself (see The San Francisco Chronicle). In fairness, I did a “Why Aren’t You at Work?” sequel for NPR’s This American Life.

Another highlight: sitting down with Eve Ensler to discuss her new one-woman show, The Vagina Monologues. “I don’t know if ‘vagina’ is ever going to be a great word,” she told me. “The word cunt I’m really interested in.” I was told that Arthur Carter enjoyed this interview with Ms. Ensler, which led me to think I might be hired someday.

At a private fund-raiser (hosted by my mom and stepfather), I was introduced to Vice President Al Gore. With a tape recorder rolling in my jacket pocket, I listened to him hold forth on Nathaniel Hawthorne and his prophetic worldview. “He talked about the emergence of the global electronic brain,” Mr. Gore told me. “The telegraph existed, but he quickly extrapolated it to a poetic image of a fully elaborated Internet worldwide—150 years ago!”

Someone nearby mentioned The Scarlet Letter. “Yes, a powerful book,” Mr. Gore said. “The movie? Wasn’t as profitable.” He laughed. His two-hour appearance at the fund-raiser raised $600,000.

Later, he gave a speech and said my full name in front of several hundred Democrats. The next two times I saw him, he blew me off. The first time I met President Bill Clinton, he praised the work of The Observer’s Joe Conason for two minutes straight. It was scary. He looked seven feet tall. The last time I saw him, he was shorter and sweeter

When I sat down with David Mamet to discuss his children’s book The Duck and the Goat, he became so irritated that he walked out of the interview. (A decade later, while covering a party for his excellent mixed martial arts movie Redbelt, I apologized for asking those rude questions; he didn’t remember it.)

Another night, my favorite bartender at The Village Idiot, Natasha Gulbenkian, agreed to answer 12 questions if we both took a shot of whiskey after each answer. Twelve questions later, Natasha, who was half my weight (I was pushing 220 then), put me in a cab.

“Hey, take this man home safely!” she told the driver. “I’m gonna get your medallion number. Be good to him, please.”

“All right baby thanks sweetheart!” I babbled.

“Tell him he is lucky to have a woman like me.”

At a Bridgehampton Polo match, actor Ben Gazzara told Bobby Zarem I was cute and stroked my forearm while reminiscing about the filming of John Cassavetes’s movie Husbands. “Well, you’ve put my finger on my favorite experience as an actor and as an artist,” Mr. Gazzara told me. “John was never impressed with success. These guys today directing these fuckin’ unwatchable pictures making millions—John loved Frank Capra! John’s films make you cry because they are about love. Husbands is about love.” Mr. Gazzarra’s wife was there, as well, a former German model named Elke who, he said, “saved my life. I’d be dead now if I hadn’t met her.”

Russell Simmons told me his favorite Cassavetes film was The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. I met Elaine Kaufman for the first time. She predicted that I would be successful and told me about the time she gave Hunter Thompson a great Watergate lead about John Dean, and the time Thompson showed up at her restaurant holding a guitar case with a rifle inside.

Dennis Hopper was there, wearing a checkered cap, matching shirt, blue blazer and khakis. A waitress brought him some warm goat cheese and spinach sandwiches. I offered him a mushroom cap instead.

“Oh really? You’re on them right now?” he said. “Yeah, how you doing? Yeah? Terrific, what, psilocybin? I’ve always thought people don’t get high because they want to die. They get high because they want to feel good.” I asked which of his fast-living friends he missed the most. He said James Dean.

Mr. Hopper didn’t want to sample my ’shrooms. “Yeah, mushrooms were always a cool experience,” he said. “No, I wouldn’t know how to handle it here. Those days are over for me. My interests and priorities have changed. You must go on, you have a wonderful day.”

I spent Thanksgiving Day 1996 with a teenage runaway from Greenwich, Conn., whom I met at a shelter in Hell’s Kitchen. I took her to lunch at a diner and she said she wanted to go to the Empire State Building. I bought her a stuffed animal at the gift shop, and when we got to the observation deck, it started snowing.

Another major highlight happened in December. In a window of Barneys on the Upper East Side, a man was posing as Sigmund Freud. Simon Doonan, the store’s creative director (and future Observer columnist), agreed to let me lie down on the couch and be psychoanalyzed by “Freud,” who turned out to be David Rakoff. We had a blast. He was hilarious and witty. Wildean. At the time, Mr. Rakoff was communications manager at HarperCollins, but clearly a comic genius. He would go on to publish three collections of essays, write countless magazine articles, perform regularly on This American Life, act in films and TV, and win the Thurber Prize for American Humor a year before he died at 47. I barely knew Mr. Rakoff, but out of the hundreds of tapes of thousands of interviews I’ve done since that day, his is the only one I’ve ever listened to again. He had a beautiful voice and was, by all accounts, a beautiful man.

Peter Kaplan sensed that I was ready to be hired as a reporter. My starting salary was $25,000, and on my first day, I almost got fired. I was told to organize a hundred or so Observer issues and stack them up neatly in the archives room. I didn’t finish the job, and at the end of the day, I left them by a trash can. The cleaning person tossed them all out.

For my first assignment, Frank DiGiacomo sent me to the San Remo building on Central Park West to investigate charges that Bruce Willis had been a lousy holiday-season tipper. I snuck around the back and buttonholed some porters and elevator guys, one of whom had a message for the (then) cheapskate tenant: “What I say to Willis [behind his back] is ‘Fuck you!’ But on the outside I say, you know, ‘Good luck.’ Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” The item was given the headline “The San Remo Scrooge.”

For a story about the city’s top gossip columnists, Cindy Adams had this to say about O.J. Simpson: “I have urinated on O.J. as often as I can, and if my bladder will hold up, I intend to continue doing that for the next year ... I would like to make Simpson-burgers out of him, okay? That’s what I’d really like to do.”

I covered the Radio City Hall premiere of 101 Dalmatians. Glenn Close (Cruella de Vil) talked to me in character! Jeff Daniels answered questions about my favorite movie, Dumb & Dumber.

I visited the Hellfire Club in the Meatpacking District. I missed the slave auction, but made it in time to cover the nude wrestling “Cat Spats” match between two hot and very young blondes. It was a split decision. I sat with Dominique and Rachelle in their car before they returned to their regular jobs as strippers at Razz’l Dazz’l in Rahway, N.J.

I spent an evening with Huntington Hartford, who inherited $100 million of the A&P fortune as a young man and squandered nearly all of it—creatively. It was his 87th birthday, and Baird Jones, the party promoter and gossip column tipster, was throwing him a soiree at the nightclub Cream. Mr. Hartford’s crazy, frisky fourth wife, Elaine, said he hadn’t left their Flatbush apartment in a year. First, we had to get Mr. Hartford out of bed and into the bathtub.

On the way to the Upper West Side, he talked about Candide and Heart of Darkness; his book about his World War II days, Pacific Revisited; and his treatise on art, Artists and Critics: Don’t Even Ignore Them. At the party, he had his picture taken with pretty girls and Salvador Dalí’s nephew. Before we dropped him off in Brooklyn, he gave me a copy of Pacific Revisited, in the hopes I could help get it published. (I still have the copy.) He told me about his grandfather, who in 1859 started A&P, which was worth $5 billion in the 1920s.

“I spent my money on the things I wanted to do,” Mr. Hartford said. “I still got $12 million. That’s not bad. I can do anything I want.”

“Death is king to me,” Spalding Gray told me backstage at Guild Hall. And about the time he masturbated into a patch of moss outside Thoreau’s cabin (“That was a great orgasm”).

Over lunch, Page Six editor Richard Johnson shared his theory that Commerce Secretary Ron Brown may have been assassinated, and some tidbits about Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York: “Boy, the stuff I hear about her that I can’t print!” he said. “Unbelievable. She’s voracious. I have never talked to her, but I’ve talked to Allan Starkie, who wrote the biography of her, and he tells you the most amazing things. He told me that she’s able to ...”

We weren’t able to print what she was allegedly able to do. But it had something to do with Kegel exercises and water.

One notorious cover story concerned seven “Blueblood Belles.” The morning it came out, I knew it would be a hit and that some of these junior jet-set girls I’d interviewed would be unhappy. (In her recent profile of me in The Observer, Kat Stoeffel called the story “vicious.”) I was afraid of what lay ahead that day, so I consulted my copy of The New Journalism and reread the part where Tom Wolfe says, in effect, if you worry about how your subjects are going to react, you’re in the wrong business.

As soon as I got to the office, the phone started ringing. A friend of the belles snarled, “I hope I never see you again” before hanging up. Michael Thomas called to heartily congratulate me for taking on members of my own social class. I don’t think he knew I hailed from Prairie Village, Kansas.

Then one of the belles and her mother conference-called and took turns berating me. In 2011, I ran into this same mama bear at Doubles and apologized. After another tongue-lashing, she let me know that she had told someone not to hire me.

At the Jet Lounge, I met 17-year-old Bijou Phillips, who was then making $200,000 a year as a model. She told me about the demonic thoughts she’d been having; that her father, John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, and she were getting along; and that the only good experience she ever had on drugs was five years earlier: “I stole mushrooms from my dad and me and my best friend Emily were living in Palm Springs, and I went Rollerblading with no shirt on—no shirt on—down the streets of Palm Springs, California, holding onto the backs of cars.”

On a Thursday night, I interviewed a bunch of Columbia University students at an Upper West Side bar offering “all you can drink for $10.” Apparently, the great Lillian Ross—the author of the magnificent book Picture and the classic profile of Ernest Hemingway—had enjoyed the piece, and a New Yorker editor wanted to know if I was able to do anything for “Talk of the Town.”

Very flattering! But my mission in life was to serve The New York Observer.

I saw The Band play Carnegie Hall and interviewed ABC News correspondent Forrest Sawyer about it afterward. He was with a gorgeous actress named Joan Buddenhagen. Another night, I was at an outdoor table at Nello interviewing Chuck Zito, who was guarding Mickey Rourke’s Harley. Another night, I sat at the bar at Nello and had a heart-to-heart with Mr. Rourke, who talked about boxing, praying, his old feud with Richard Johnson and how much he missed the most important person in his life, his wife, Carre Otis.

One day, the great photographer James Hamilton took a picture of me half-naked, looking up at a banana, which ran on Page 2. “The New York Observer’s George Gurley, in an homage to another sex symbol of the journalism world, John F. Kennedy Jr.,” read the caption.

I spent an afternoon in Queens with Jack Palance. We talked about his book, The Forest of Love. I hadn’t read it. He figured that out and explained the plot. We stepped outside in the driveway. He smoked a thick Hoyo de Monterrey. I smoked a Camel Light. He extinguished his cigar by rolling it between his thumb and forefinger.

’97 was a good year. I spent a couple hours in a bistro with actress Maria de Medeiros, the blueberry pancakes babe from Pulp Fiction. I had another long talk with Roger Clinton before his band performed in Brighton Beach. Right before they were due onstage, it was discovered that the nightclub’s snare drum was being used in the room downstairs by the house band.

When I asked Roger if he wanted to comment on “The Great Snare Drum Crisis,” he snapped, “George, that’s enough, buddy, okay? Every single thing you want to ask me my thoughts on!” I mumbled an apology. Secretly I was elated, because I got his whole rant on tape.

Rolling Stone had a 25th anniversary party for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at the Lotus Club. I wasn’t invited, but determined to go. So I walked in, said hello to Johnny Depp and Kate Moss at the coat check, walked up the stairs behind Ralph Steadman, saw in the distance a handful of guests surrounding a beaming Mick Jagger, and someone with a clipboard that said “private party” or something.

I waited outside. And waited. Had a brief chat with Tom Wolfe on his way out. Then Thompson burst out, doing his crazy bowlegged walk. With him was a mean broad. They jumped into the back of a chauffeured limo and bent over to snort something. When they exited, I asked if I could come to the party. Nope. I promised not to write about what they were doing in the backseat. The woman blew up at me, screeched, “You’re gonna burn out!” Wow. It was like she put an evil spell on me. When Jann Wenner heard I was out in the cold, he sent word to let me in. That was cool. At the top of the stairs, he laughed, said he knew me. Inside, Kate Moss was also nice. Johnny Depp mentioned that he might like to play Thompson in a movie. Matt Dillon was cool, but I think he made fun of me for being from Kansas. He was in a movie called Kansas, and I’d told him I was there when they were filming it.

A security guard who’d been tailing me removed the batteries from my recorder. So I left. Ten years later, while enjoying myself on Ron Perelman’s yacht in St. Barts, around 2 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, I saw the mean broad and alluded to the incident, hoping to make a peace offering. She didn’t remember me. Like a snake, she casually wandered off to talk to Mr. Perelman, no doubt tattling that a reporter was on board. Little did she know that earlier, he had personally invited me, rubbed my belly, given me a noogie, introduced me to his father. Not bragging, just saying. Truth was, I was a little burned out by then.

Oh, this was huge. For the year-end issue, I did a 5,800-word oral history of George Plimpton, interviewed all the gossip columnists, and something else. “Gurley, you wrote the whole paper,” said Peter Stevenson.

But Mr. Stevenson kept my ego in check by playing pranks, most of which I have blocked out.

I also made the mistake of telling Mr. Stevenson about some of my nicknames in high school: The Jinx, Basketball Head, Spalding.

I was on a roll, at my peak of productivity. Always eschewing, even scoffing at, serious, shoe-leather reportage (hunting down “sources” and incriminating documents, sweating out the truth, holding powerful feet to the fire, sitting at a desk and making calls), I headed out of the office to investigate the inner lives of perverts, sexy dentists, degenerates, transsexuals, porn stars, kid comedians, conservatives, Russian party girls, peep-show girls, barflies, honky-tonk barmaids, a day trader who had lost $800,000 and said it didn’t matter, two male prostitutes, a 45-year-old boy, mobster wannnabes, aspiring actors, burned-out socialites, aging lotharios, midget bowlers, dwarf-tossers, a B-movie scream queen, and asked them questions such as “What’s the wildest thing you’ve done sexually this year?” and “What are you wearing?” and “Could you keep talking into my recorder because I’m gonna get a drink and hit the men’s room?”

Pretty sure this was the year I picked up ageless sexpot Aileen “Suzy” Mehle and escorted her to a fancy party. I hung out with Pat Boone in a hotel room, worked out with Dr. Ruth at the Reebok Sports Club, listened to Governor Hugh Carey and Robert Caro talk about Lyndon Johnson.

I also interviewed the fetishist Danny the Wonder Pony; Henry Rollins; the greatest spoons player in the world, Mr. Spoons; Phyllis Diller; Carol Channing; comedian Pat Cooper; Bob Dole; Ozzy Osbourne; Ray Manzarek; Hunter Thompson; Ugly George; the Playmate of the Year; George Carlin; David Foster Wallace; Eric Stoltz; Amy Irving; Wavy Gravy; Jim Carroll; Queerdonna (a 450-pound Madonna impersonator); the French artist Christo; Matt Drudge; Fran Lebowitz; John Updike; drag queen Hedda Lettuce; Ernest Borgnine; and Thomas Meehan, who wrote the book for the musical Annie and was finishing up a new musical with Mel Brooks called The Producers. On a Sunday, I took an impromptu stroll with Cardinal John O’Connor (I never left my apartment without my recorder).

I didn’t always make friends. Four subjects were fired after my profile of them hit the stands. A public access host threatened my life. “Please return my books to my superintendent and then let’s never speak again,” a political pundit said via email. Courtney Love hollered at me outside a party for Donatella Versace. Isabella Rossellini yelled, “Stop calling this number!” Talented chanteuse and actress Phoebe Legere screamed “Fuck you!” and then hung up.

Celebrating my reportorial exploits in Slate, the writer Inigo Thomas pointed out that I allowed my subjects to talk without dwelling on my reaction to who was sitting before me. A colleague called me a hit man. Others called my method “giving them the rope to hang themselves.” I didn’t see it that way. My attitude was: hey, we’re only here for a while, let’s stop wasting time and spill the beans, confess everything so that future historians will know what it was like to be alive 500 years ago.

At a big party for Le Cirque, I asked guests to talk about Bill Clinton and food. Bill Cosby said, “Fuck you!” But it was funny the way he said it, and then we sat down for a nice chat. Then I did the same with Al Goldstein, Eileen Ford, Lee Iacocca, Radioman, Ivana Trump (there with her beau, Roffredo Gaetani d’Aragona) and Sirio Maccioni.

It was the height of the White House mess, but no one had an unkind word for Mr. Clinton except Robin Leach (“Never trust a president who eats hamburgers and drinks Diet Coke!”).

Rudy Giuliani was there because September 14 was Le Cirque 2000’s 25th anniversary day. The mayor didn’t want to talk about Mr. Clinton or food, just kept walking. Don’t blame him. Woody Allen sympathized with the president, said he was being “persecuted.” Asked about food, the comic genius/auteur of our time (still!) said: “I would love to order the lamb chops and the foie gras, the caviar. I wouldn’t dare eat any of those things—they’d kill me.” He was eating green salad and soup. Fish soup.

At the end of the party, I met a Mormon girl from Utah, and the next time she was in town, we tried to have sex in Central Park. I couldn’t go through with it, though. Too many people watching.

Another day, I asked Tom Wolfe what he thought about the Whitney Museum: “The worst and most unfortunate museum built in America,” he said. “It looks like a machine gun turret built by Socialists to exterminate bourgeois women shopping at boutiques on Madison Avenue. As any honest curator at the Whitney will tell you, it’s an extremely difficult and unfortunate building. Inside, it looks like a municipal parking garage ... Realism has crept in—it’s okay if it’s ugly now, if it’s perverse enough, if it’s twisted enough, but God help you if it’s pretty. I don’t care what the Whitney shows. It’s just a dreadful building.”

I had dinner with Bebe Buell, who had funny stories about the many rock stars she had dated: Iggy Pop, Stiv Bators, Mick Jagger, Elvis Costello, David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Steven Tyler, Todd Rundgren and so on. I didn’t get on as well with golfer Greg Norman. Later his publicist called Mr. Windolf to say that I had been “weird and unprofessional.” Mr. Windolf convinced me that this was a good thing. I was just doing my job. That became my mantra, my excuse for everything.

I spent a day at the J. Sisters salon to learn about Brazilian bikini waxes. It was fun talking to women about their vaginas. Naomi Campbell said it was “a great wax they do, because it cleans everything away.” Another client, Kirstie Alley, told me what it feels like: “Think a baby’s butt but all over.”

The salon’s manager, Magaly Santos, said she got a “thong wax” every three weeks and couldn’t live without it. “They clean the back of the butt between the legs and almost the whole front,” said Ms. Santos, who then confirmed that it’s better for oral sex.

The headline of the story was “What’s New, Pussycat? ’90s women to adopt sleek new look down below.” The first sentence: “It’s not your mother’s vulva anymore.” (I wish I could take credit for that.)

Halfway through a pub crawl with my high school pals, we made a pit stop at 7B. David Cross was there with his hot girlfriend, Quinn. I had my tape recorder with me. He was hilarious for a good 10 minutes, and then I asked him for 10 enthusiasms. They were goat cheese, pinball, drugs, snowboarding, the bands Gravel Pit and You Am I, New York City, Quinn Heraty, walking, red wine and Internet porn. “You know what?” he said. “Strike Internet porn and put Charles Portis, my favorite author.”

I spent an afternoon at the shoe boutique Manolo Blahnik, where they were having a big sale. I didn’t know it, but my future wife, Hilly, was working there that day.

On a Monday night, Mr. Windolf claimed he didn’t have anything for the New York World section, even though he probably had a couple dozen submissions. I went to the Subway Inn, a dive bar across the street from Bloomingdale’s, and asked patrons to tell me some fight stories. Everybody there had one. Another Monday night, Mr. Windolf sent me downtown to find someone who could tell me what was cool. I found the perfect guy at the bar 2A. Joseph King, 26, told me what was cool: Cormac McCarthy, Tom Waits, summer hats, shining your shoes, washing your dick and balls with urine after you’ve had sex with a nasty girl—that’s cool, he said. So was Sicilian voodoo, cooking with olive oil, getting a haircut on a Tuesday, Frank Sinatra, dancing, betting on horses, killing rats with a BB gun and smoking crack.

And then he told me what sucked: heroin, snorting cocaine, the transvestite thing, fetish, youth culture, skateboarding, short-haired girls, the Bettie Page look, baggy pants, deejays, tattoos, piercings, sneakers, media, advertising, England and France.

I was proud of this interview. The New York Press called it “awful.”

One night at the Metropolitan Opera, I talked to Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Mike Wallace. Kurt Vonnegut blew me off. Later, I smoked a joint with Bobby Zarem, who called the next day to ask that I not mention that. Thanks to a computer crash in 2006, the article is gone, lost to history, along with 50,000 saved emails, including a friendly one from Maureen Dowd.

I wrote a good piece about upstart conservative feminist author Wendy Shalit, whose message was devastating to the aspirations of many of my chums, namely that “Women and girls should embrace sexual modesty.” A few weeks ago, Jim Windolf had his students at Wesleyan read it. He said they enjoyed it very much and discussed it for half an hour.

I spent an hour talking to Eartha Kitt at the Café Carlyle. During her performance, she sang a whole song looking directly at me. “Next time, bring your father,” she said, and the whole room erupted.

Bad memory: covering the after party for David Mamet’s play The Old Neighborhood and sitting at a table across from Al Kooper and Al Hirschfeld, with my tape recorder rolling. I wish I could hop in a time machine and ask them better questions, or just apologize for being such a jackass.

One Sunday evening, my then-girlfriend informed me that she had just cheated on me, in part because I hadn’t taken her out on Saturday night, once again. I was shell-shocked and unsure I could get through my interview with Helena Bonham Carter the next day. I showed up at the actress’s hotel room and for 45 minutes pretended to listen to her discuss The Theory of Flight, a movie she’d made that had something to do with the sex lives of handicapped people.

I steered the conversation my way, told her all about the cuckolding, and then asked her for advice. She was taken aback. “I don’t know you and I don’t know that woman, so I’m not really qualified to comment,” she said. “I’m sorry for you, but, you know, it’s just an intensely private thing.” I persisted and we talked about my love life for the next half-hour. After the piece came out (“Helena and Me”), Page Six ran an item headlined “Pity Pity” which began, “Three little words New York Observer scribe might want to learn: Too Much Information.”

In January, I did a big piece on sexy New York women over 50, and spent quality time with models Lauren Hutton and Carmen Dell’Orefice; Larissa the legendary shearling coat designer; novelist Judy Green; Aileen “Suzy” Mehle; filmmaker Ann Barish; society fixture Jan Cushing Amory; and Rita Jenrette, then best known as the former congressman’s wife who had posed for Playboy. (The subject of a recent New Yorker profile, she now lives in Rome and is married to Prince Nicolo Boncompagni Ludovisi of Piombino.)

Back at the townhouse, I was getting tired of sitting next to the “poopie bathroom” on the fourth floor. I’d spent a year sitting next to the other bathroom, which was even worse.

Couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t get any work done, couldn’t breathe! Could I work from home? Nope.

To retaliate, because I was being driven mad by sitting next to the poopie bathroom, I started an internal gossip column, Rumor, with staff writer Lexy Zissu. We kept it hidden in plain sight in the system so people could open the file, read our items and add their own tidbits. There were a lot of poopie bathroom “sightings” and blind items:

“Someone is in there now, we’re not gonna say who or how long but we just heard a flush and it’s ... it’s ... it’s ... Stay tuned. There goes another flush. Well, we know what this means. This one’s gonna take a while ... Which editor of the publishing column has been in the poopie bathroom for 45 minutes? ... Which staffer has more than passing acquaintance with the horse (i.e. ‘smack,’ ‘brown tea,’ etc.) ... We hear a lady staffer is on the phone so much she keeps an empty Evian bottle under her desk in case she has to micturate ... WHICH STAFFER who normally keeps company with a paid lady found himself with trou around his ankles under the big starry sky in Central Park recently, attempting sloppy congress with a babe he met on the Internet? ... which whopper-telling, departed Observer staff woman recently told her boyfriend, ‘Don’t you love me? I’m famous, I’m great looking AND I’m a nymphomaniac! I mean, come on, how great is THAT?’ And he goes, ‘And you have a big ego, too.’ And she goes, ‘Yes! I have a big ego too! Don’t you love me?’ Same departed Observer staff woman said to a guy she met at a party: ‘You’re great. We should have sex sometime!’ …

“WHICH somewhat older (but it doesn’t matter) ladyfriend/courtesan of a young staffer has purchased an ‘electronic ladybug’ to help her feel pleasure? Bzzzzzzzzz ...

“RUMOR FLASH: More than one Observer employee(s) has made ‘the beast with two backs’ on the premises in the last year—NAME ’EM and you win LUNCH FOR TWO at George Gurley’s East Side duplex (the maid will cook) ...

“Just askin’: What’s with the new guy? And why is he always on Nexis? ... Extra credit: Who do you have to blow around here to get a raise or cushy part-time deal? (DON’T answer that!!!)

“SEEN: GOOD BOOKS on the stairwell!! ... Where did Graydon’s screenplay go to? ... Why are all the new people so glum and silent? ... Who is a big fat Tattle taler?”

One day Joe Conason, the veteran investigative journalist and political pundit who had been at The Observer since the late ’80s, was asked if he might consider giving up his desk. The reason was that he was rarely in the office, and some hot-shot reporters had just been hired and given mid-six-
figure salaries.

Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Windolf asked if I wanted Mr. Conason’s desk. Yes, I did. It was prime real estate, next to a window facing out onto fluffy trees and Park Avenue, and as far away as possible from the stinky bathroom. It also had a nice, comfy high chair.

First, they said, I had to ask Mr. Kaplan for permission. So I went to his office and right away he said, “No way, forget it, get back to work.”

“But George, did he kind of wink at you?” Mr. Windolf asked when I reported back.

“See, Kaplan can’t just give you that desk,” Mr. Stevenson added. “There are other reporters here, and unlike you, they file every week without fail.”

They said what I needed to do was a “land grab,” and that Mr. Kaplan would be impressed by this bold move and respect me more.

This was all nonsense, but I bought it. So I showed up that night when the place was empty and moved all of Mr. Conason’s stuff to my desk, piles and piles of stuff, and moved my junk over to his. Eventually I was forgiven. And happy. The thing about the high chair is I could hide behind it, get down on the floor, squeeze under the desk, nest into some pillows, take a long nap, and no one would ever know.

Observer editors had once called me things like fearless, wise, a genius, a hit man, which may have been to build up my confidence and put some more fire in my belly. Now I was being called other things worse than Clownboy, in order to light a fire under my ass and make me produce more.

I’d often felt like someone who had slipped through the cracks, who didn’t belong here or in New York City, and it was only a matter of time before I’d be driven out of town (with pitchforks) and sent back to Kansas. It was a weirdly comforting fantasy. But now I was worried that I could be fired any day, a fear that would remain until I eventually was shitcanned (justifiably) eight years later.

Not long after Mr. Kaplan gave me a generous raise, I fell into a major slump and didn’t file a story for six weeks (“I’m tired of writing about socialites!” I’d whine) and he was fed up. I was in the habit of staying out very late at sleazy bars and nightclubs in search of stories, and not showing up the next day, claiming that I’d been meeting with sources.

One afternoon, Mr. Kaplan saw that I wasn’t at my desk or under it, and decided that since my keyboard wasn’t being used, why not throw it out the window? According to a witness, Peter Stevenson, it almost hit Kitty Carlisle Hart, who lived nearby, and if Mr. Kaplan hadn’t been restrained, my computer would have been defenestrated, too.

When I finally stumbled in to work, Mr. Kaplan gave me an ultimatum: either I get a piece in the next four issues or he would fire me. I managed to do that, but soon fell into another slump. Mr. Kaplan called me into his office again for a long powwow. He said he was going to have to cut my salary in half, but I could do the occasional freelance article. I walked out thinking I’d been promoted.

Side note: the several times Peter Kaplan personally edited me were thrilling experiences. So was simply being allowed in his office. So was getting one of his famous pep talks before heading out to do a story. He could have read from the phone book or mumbled drunken non sequiturs and pig latin—as long as I had his full attention for two, three minutes (with the door shut, even better) before he sent me on my way, I was in the zone.

And then he’d go, “George.” Pause. “Have fun.” Such beautiful, inspiring bullshit. Or did he really mean it? Didn’t matter.

“Have a ball” was so much better than “Get that story!” or “Are you going to the Hamptons? No, no, George, are you going to the Hamptons this weekend?” Translation: you are either going to the Hamptons this weekend to take the temperature out there this summer, find Alec Baldwin and Christie Brinkley and Chevy Chase, get into that Hillary Clinton fund-raiser, talk to locals and bring back a cover story OR you will be fired. For the 13 years I was on staff, a week rarely went by that I didn’t think that was a possibility.

Mr. Kaplan sent me an email on May 13: “Dear George, I’m really excited about [John] Stamos. And about your 35th year. Take care of yourself. Peter.

I soldiered on. There would be some solid feature stories: think pieces about female feet, vagina size, the politics of facials (not the kind you get at the salon), the top 10 sexual fantasies of women at the Beatrice Inn, my own about Sarah Palin, lots of nightlife reporting and a couples therapy column.

By 2005, I had a serious girlfriend, and after three years together, we decided we needed professional help, something I casually mentioned to Mr. Stevenson, who had come up with the idea for Candace Bushnell to write a column called “Sex and the City.” He suggested I write about going to couples therapy with Hilly. I figured it was another prank. Nah, he’s just messing with Clownboy. But he kept bringing it up.

It didn’t register that he might be serious until a month later, when Hilly and I were in Peter Kaplan’s office. Five minutes into hearing Hilly go on about our antics was enough.

“Say no more! Do it!” Mr. Kaplan said. “We don’t even need a therapist! We’ll just put the two of you in the room with a tape recorder! What should we call it? Doesn’t matter! It’s gonna be a big hit!”

I liked the idea. I’d met enough colorful characters and spoken to nearly every celebrity I’d ever wanted to meet, including Lou Reed. But I was tired of listening to so much babble. It always took at least 45 minutes before I could cut in, take control of the conversation, and persuade subjects to open up and bare their souls.

I also felt like I had pissed off too many people, a lot of them actresses. “How dare you?” Catherine Deneuve asked me. “What kind of questions are these?” Charlotte Rampling inquired.

So why not turn the tables on me? Why not interview myself?

Another motivation: I was tired of transcribing stacks of 120-minute tapes. With this therapy column, I would only have to deal with an hour of tape, and with my new voice recognition software, I wouldn’t have to type. Besides, the whole thing was going to run as a transcript!

I called Dr. Steven Lamm, my longtime family doctor (and the author of many books including The Hardness Factor: How to Achieve Your Best Health and Sexual Fitness at Any Age), and he referred me to Dr. Harold W. Selman.

The George & Hilly column ran for three and a half years. In June 2009, I was justifiably let go, fired, shitcanned, and yet I have continued writing for The Observer ever since. I used to say that getting something in the paper, in this great, one-of-a-kind, independent publication, was something I couldn’t live without—it was “my oxygen.” And to this day, when I file, I still get that same thrill, that same bounce in my step, just like the first time when my Tom Wolfe piece made the front page in August 1995.

One last thing: I used to have a reputation for being difficult to deal with, and at times impossible. But I’m better now. The couples therapy really helped. Which wouldn’t have happened without The New York Observer and too many Observers to name. But I would like to thank Peter Stevenson, Peter Kaplan, Arthur Carter, Jared Kushner, Jim Windolf, Dr. Harold W. Selman, my parents George Gurley Sr. and Katherine Bryan, and my lovely wife, Hilly.

editorial@observer.com

DJ Uncle Mike.

Right now, No. 8 is the most exclusive club in New York, unless you count the Zodiac, which consists of 12 male blue-blood WASPs, one of whom has to die before a new member can join. While more diverse and democratic, No. 8 does have a strict door policy. To get in, it helps if you’re famous, or know owner Bobby Rossi of LDV Hospitality or “brand partner” Amy Sacco, or preferably all three.

In his New York Times profile of Ms. Sacco (“The Empress Is In”), writer Bob Morris captured the scene at No. 8 on opening night last May, noting that patrons in the upstairs “rec room” were selecting old records and handing them to “a bearded deejay.”

I knew that had to be DJ Uncle Mike, who stopped shaving in 1990 and used to spin at Bungalow 8 and said things like “psyched,” “groovy,” “cool,” “groovy cool,” “joyous,” “happy,” “beautiful,” “lovely,” “blessed,” “lucky,” “good time,” “all good” and “life’s good.”

When Bungalow closed in 2009, along with Siberia and the Beatrice Inn, nightlife began to suck for me, especially after I found myself being picked up by two bouncers at Kenmare and bounced headfirst onto the sidewalk. Shamed, I fled to Park Slope. Soon, I felt so estranged from humanity I could only connect with my geriatric cat. Why don’t we all join the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement and return the Earth to the critters? I thought.

I considered seeking help, but could no longer afford a shrink or life coach. Fortunately Uncle Mike agreed to meet with me early one early evening in August. It was weird seeing a fellow creature of the night at that hour. He looked the same, like a cross between Rick Rubin, Billy Gibbons, Rob Zombie, Santa Claus and The Dude, and he exuded a familiar vibe.

“Dude, I just always feel like I’m really lucky,” he said from behind the wheel of a rusty, ratty, dented, funky old car. “I love music, and I actually get to go to places and play music. I love happy people, and if I’m lucky, I can make people happy. It’s great.”

He was on his way to No. 8, where, as house deejay, he spins five nights a week upstairs. It was he who selected every one of the 8,010 records that line the shelves of the rec room. His other regular gig is at Brooklyn Bowl every Saturday afternoon. He has also done private parties for Elton John, Bono, Sienna Miller, Lenny Kravitz and Saturday Night Live; spun with Lindsay Lohan; opened for Toots and the Maytals; and performed solo in Montauk, Miami, Las Vegas, Brazil, Ireland, London, New Jersey and Vietnam.

He’s been underpaid, overpaid and paid right on the nose, but never paid as much as Skrillex, not the top end. When people ask him to deejay, he makes sure they know what they’re getting. Because if all they’re going to ask for is Rihanna—and that’s okay, that’s a whole vibe—that’s not what he plays, that’s not what he’s about.

According to his website, “DJ Uncle Mike plays an eclectic mix of ‘Vintage Music,’ including Rock & Roll, New Wave, Motown, Classic Rock, Punk, Funk, Surf, Disco, Reggae, Metal, Bubblegum, Ska, Soul, Rat Pack and more ...”

EXTRA: Click here for a Spotify playlist from DJ Uncle Mike.

“Music is magic and musicians are magicians,” he said cruising west on 14th Street. “There’s nothing like the face of somebody who hears a song and just gets turned on and lights up, and whether they get up into their crazy dancing, or maybe standing at the bar and paying their bill, tapping their credit card to the beat.”

He joked that his car radio only plays music from 1967. Actually it’s broken.

“Sometimes it’s nice to have no music,” he confessed before turning on Eighth Avenue. “And just have … thoughts. Thoughts are nice. At some point, music is great and it’s great to have it around all the time—I want music now, bam! I have Spotify, I have everything, bam! When I was younger, it wasn’t like that. You’d go buy records, tapes, you had your music and you had your gaps. But we live in New York, so we have to pay attention to what’s going on, and if I’m blasting music all the time, I’m not going to pay attention to, like, not running this guy over.”

Uncle Mike parked down the block from No. 8. He didn’t have to start spinning for a few hours. I asked him about the current state of nightlife.

“Things in New York change,” he said. “People get resentful, saying it’s not what used to be. It’s never gonna to be what it used to be. It is what it is right now! And I think we should just be making the best of out of what is right now. Some nights you deejay, and as soon as the club opens, people go, ‘There’s no one here!’ Yes, you’re the first one in. What did you expect, like the club to have a thousand people there dancing? I gotta tell you, if you are the first person there, you are privileged to start. The. Party.

“Party-starters are definitely appreciated,” Uncle Mike continued. “They come in, they don’t care who’s in the room, whether the room is full or empty, what the status of the room is. I think more and more, people just think you walk into a place and the party is already there. You’ve got to make it, you’ve got to put some effort into it, you’ve got to bring that positive energy of, ‘Yeahhh, let’s make this happen! I’m psyched! I’m psyched to go out tonight! I’m psyched to go out and see my friends! I’m psyched to meet new people! I’m just psyched!’”

I asked permission to call him Mike. He didn’t say yes or no.

“It’s all good, my friend,” he said, exiting his vehicle.

Outside No. 8 stood Disco, the legendary 6-foot-7, 290-pound doorman. Inside, Mike chatted with the manager Lily Cho, another Bung alum. The bartender (artist Ryan Metke) looked familiar too. Upstairs in the rec room, Mike ordered two tuna tartares, two grilled cheeses, two beet salads and one scotch. He told me that in 2008, he went out 125 nights in a row, and in 2009, his big toe started hurting. What the fuck is that? he thought.

“You got the gout!” a doctor told him. Mike had heard of this “disease of kings.” It happened when you lived well. The doc said he could either change his diet or take pills.

He quit booze no problem, but it was tough giving up things he loves—red meat, pizza, pastrami, chopped liver—and switching to chicken, fish, fruits and veggies. “It’s a sign,” he said of his condition. “Your body’s telling you, ‘Yo, change your shit up, and by the way, if you think that pain’s bad, boy I got some pain for you if you don’t fucking change.’ Listen to your body.”

When I returned from the men’s room, Mike shared his prevailing memory of me from Bungalow: “You walked up to me and, out of nowhere, said, ‘Metamucil, it’s really good for you!’ And I thought, ‘This is a nice guy.’”

So did he ...?

“No. I haven’t needed it, but the point is you were kind enough to impart me with some wisdom. So for that I gotta say thank you, brother.”

Besides us, the place was empty. Then Russell Simmons and a lady appeared, and someone cranked up the music. Mike and I moved to a private back room, a k a “the broom closet.” The view of the rec room through the one-way mirror made me think of 007’s bachelor pad or Otter’s place in Animal House if he had a million extra bucks. “If you’re not here, then you’re never going to know what it’s like,” Mike said. “But if you’re here, you’re never gonna forget it.”

He wouldn’t talk about the celebrities who have been to No. 8, among them Bono, Daniel Craig, Anne Hathaway, Demi Moore, Clive Owen, Waris Ahluwalia, Peter Beard, Jim Carrey and Ed Westwick. “I know nothing, nothing!” he said. “I show up and I deejay. People I work with are very nice to me. Give me wonderful food to eat. Let me play music to make people feel happy.”

He couldn’t say what happened last night. “I have a decent selective memory,” he said. “My memory remembers things when my memory remembers to remember them.” Or even what he might play that night. “I never know what I’m going to do, and I still won’t know until after I’ve done it, and even then, I might not remember it. I’m going to play some of the records in this room.

“Music’s the gift that never stops giving,” he continued. “I turn somebody on to a song they’ve never heard before, and now that’s there for them. They know that that pushes the happy button for them. It’s like, okay, hi, life sucks. What makes me happy in this life that sucks? These little things, songs—it’s called music.”

Dinner was served and quickly devoured. Mike told Lily Cho that the grilled cheese was “so there.” She called him the greatest. I asked what it was like being around beautiful women every night. “It’s fucking horrible,” he said. “It’s miserable. Pity me.”

At 10:45, he began pulling records from the shelves. He didn’t know how many he might pick out: “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be ambiguous about answers, but I don’t know. There’s a great Ozzy song, ‘Don’t Ask Me, I Don’t Know.’ Because I don’t know!”

At 11:02, he entered the deejay booth. It was time to get ready, make sure his shit was together, find his flashlight, check the power supply, mixing board, wires. He has about 15 crates of records back there, tried and true stuff, safe bets—the less organized the better.

His first selection was the “Batman Theme” by The Ventures. He cleaned the next LP off. Put headphones on. Put the needle on the groove. Took the headphones off. The Stones’ “Undercover of the Night” was a perfect segue. “I do a very relaxed style of deejay, not as mix-intensive as a lot of the other folks out there,” he confided. “I try to do the best version of me possible, rather than a lousy version of other people. DJ Uncle Mike does the best version of DJ Uncle Mike that DJ Uncle Mike could possibly do.”

Better than anyone?

“No, somebody could probably do me a little better than me. But it’s not an exact science.”

Russell Simmons and his date left. It was just the two of us again. Soon, though, we had company. Mike watched as pockets of people began to coalesce. Two party-starters were starting to feel it after he played the Police, followed by the Brothers Johnson, Blancmange, more Stones, Billy Idol, Stevie Wonder, ABC, Earth, Wind & Fire, Spandau Ballet, B.T. Express and David Bowie.

By 1 a.m., things were getting crazy. People dancing on tables, grinding on one another, falling over. Mike calls this stage “drunk o’clock.” It can happen anytime. With help from Rod Stewart, Steve Winwood, Blondie, more Stones, Aerosmith, Grandmaster Flash, Steve Miller, Talking Heads, Cheap Trick, the Monkees, the Bangles and more Stones, DJ Uncle Mike made sure it stayed drunk o’clock until 4 a.m.

UNCLE MIKE’S SCHEDULE is “fluid,” so there is no “usually.” But around 6 a.m., he often returns to his doorman building on the Upper East Side, where he has lived alone more than half his life. One late afternoon, he gave me a tour of his one-bedroom “cave,” which is like a museum of Mike then and now. There are childhood toys (Star Wars figures, a race car set, a Gumby doll), an 8-track player (a bar mitzvah present), a CB radio, a full can of Billy beer, a giant empty bottle of Beefeater, four pairs of Puma suedes and a life-size poster of Bill Cosby. Lots of rock ’n’ roll stuff, too.

On the bookshelves: The Cat in the Hat, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Learning Yiddish, Writing Television Sitcoms, No One Gets Out of Here Alive, Crazy From the Heat, Hammer of the Gods, and two copies each of Wiseguy and Please Kill Me. On the walls: show posters, gold records of bands he has worked with, and framed photos of Mike with Ozzy Osbourne, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Alice Cooper and Joey Ramone.

On his computer: 25,000 songs, a list of the 266 bands he has seen in concert (“that I can remember”), and more photos of him: with Ozzy and Joe Frazier, Dickey Betts, Charlie Daniels, Joe Strummer, members of AC/DC and Cheap Trick, the drummer from the Sex Pistols, Evel Knievel, Liza Minnelli, Pia Zadora, Morton Downey Jr., posing next to a bummed-out Tommy Chong at a High Times event, by a dead body on a stretcher outside CBGB’s, being choked for real by the lead singer of Venom (“dude, it hurt”), with guys from Slayer, Pantera, Suicidal Tendencies, Rage Against the Machine, Pia Zadora again, Ronald McDonald, and backstage at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in 1995 with Lemmy at the Motorhead singer’s 50th birthday.

Michael Schnapp was born late one night in Queens. He grew up in the Five Towns area, close to the airport, the city, the beach. “Nice area, nice family, nice house, nice friends,” he said. “Nothing too bizarre. No drama, didn’t get arrested, didn’t kill anybody. What can I say? We definitely had a good time. Definitely burned our hands on the flame of life a lot.” His father was in the perfume and garbage business, and before having kids, his mother had been a secretary at Look magazine. Mike was always a big, tall, kid, never skinny, popular but a loner.

Music was his first and only real passion. He remembers the first time he heard “Light My Fire” at age 7, the same year he went to his first concert: Roberta Flack. Before sending him to camp, his mother bought him a portable record player and a bunch of singles. He liked the ones by Elton John and Edgar Winter, and “Hocus Pocus” by the band Focus. “I also learned that records melt in the sun that summer,” he recalled. “The next thing you know, they’re like the Alps, up and down, up and down. Wow, can’t play that fucking thing no more! See ya!”

The first album he bought was Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The first concert he saw at the Garden was Peter Frampton. The guy sitting in front of him turned around, said ‘How you guys doing!” before pulling out an envelope stuffed with joints. R2-D2 came out onstage to do a duet with Frampton but was broken or had laryingitis.

Next he saw Jethro Tull. The opening act was James Taylor’s brother Livingston. The crowd began to boo right away. “It was getting to be a loud roar of hate,” Mike recalled. “By the end of the third song it was the ‘fuck you’ chant. ‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’ The whole Garden’s going ‘Fuck you!’ to one man on an acoustic guitar. That’s pretty impressive. Someone comes out and taps him on the shoulder, like, dude, you gotta go. So he turns around, walks off, and he gets about two-thirds off the stage, so everyone starts applauding. He turns around, comes back out, goes to the mike in says, ‘Oh, so I guess you really want me!’ and just starts playing again. It got violent. There was some hate in the air that night.”

In junior high, they made Mike take some tests and said he’d be a good architect.

He said, “What the fuck is that?” They said, “You build buildings.” He said, “I don’t want to build buildings. I mean, it doesn’t sound like fun.”

In college he took bowling as a class. His grandpa always used to say “learn a trade!” so he majored in communications, deejayed at the radio station and did security at concerts. After Dizzy Gillespie played an afternoon show, Mike volunteered to drive him and the band home. On the way, Mike was told to stop at a bank. The teller wouldn’t cash Dizzy Gillespie’s paycheck without ID, so the great man puffed out his cheeks. She didn’t recognize him. He just happened to have a picture of his large erect penis in action, said “that’s me!” and she screamed. Back in the van, everyone laughed and fired up joints.

Eventually, Mike landed a job at Combat Records, and was soon promoting metal bands like Venom, Slayer, Exodus, and Megadeth. And partying. “I did cocaine in the ’80s once for seven years,” he admitted. “It’s a funny statement, but at some point, yeah, I was on a fucking tear. Yeah! Smoking, drinking, snorting, popping, uhhh running around going nuts.”

So he got it out of his system?

“Yeah! The last time I ever ingested cocaine was February 1987, and it was one of those things where, ‘This is horrible, I feel miserable.’” He started doing it again for a few months and stopped again. He did it one more time and said never again.

Next he went on tour with Megadeth. One of Mike’s jobs was to keep the band from beating the crap out of each other. At the end of a show in Philadelphia, the band’s leader, Dave Mustaine, spat on drummer Gar Samuelson, who returned fire with a drumstick. After Mustaine hurled his guitar into the drum set, everyone went backstage and began screaming. “Come on pussy, what are you gonna do?” Samuelson asked Mustaine, who was waving a broken tequila bottle around, with Mike in between them.

Then they went out and played the encore. “They killed it,” Mike recalled. “The nice thing about this band was they played angry music, so it just added to the intensity of their performance.”

Mike had other pleasant memories of the six-week tour: “At some points it was so peaceful and beautiful, seeing rainbows over mountains, and I remember watching Alf a lot. Every Monday I ended up sitting in a hotel room with Dave smoking weed and watching Alf.”

In 1989, Mike went to work for Epic Records. He managed the Cycle Sluts From Hell, sent tapes of brand-new bands like Pearl Jam to influential people, and mentioned the Ozzy tickets he’d scored for them. After an appearance at Tower Records, the Prince of Darkness took a whiz on the manager’s office door while Mike kept a lookout.

In 1994, EMI Records lured Mike away with a ton of money and a fancy title. Right away he didn’t like the vibe (“horrible”), and after the first label meeting, he thought to himself, “What have I gotten myself into? I’m not happy. I fucked up.” One of his big projects was doing A&R for a band he signed, the Fun Lovin’ Criminals. When someone else at the company put a song of theirs on a sampler tape and sent 20,000 copies to record stores, Mike was psyched ... until he listened to the cassette. The song didn’t start at the beginning and sounded like shit, so he blew up at the guy: “I said, ‘You wanna know what I think of this tape?’ and I threw it against the wall. I just fucking lost it. I started screaming and yelling ‘You’re a fucking idiot!’”

Although the first Fun Lovin’ Criminals album sold a million copies worldwide, Mike’s two-year contract wasn’t renewed. He fell into a funk, and people stopped returning his calls. “I was bitter and angry and pissed off and not afraid to share it, and it didn’t do me well,” he said.

Mike went from “vice president of rock” to roadie. Former colleagues laughed when they found out he was now driving punk bands to concerts. “People were like, ‘Really, you’re a roadie?’” he recalled. “I go, ‘Yeah, but actually I was happy today.’ I never laughed as much as when I was on the road with the guys in Murphy’s Law.”

Mike took an office job at a music company but got sick of it fast. He preferred deejaying, which he’d been doing part-time, and hanging out at Amy Sacco’s first club, Lot 61. “She was wonderful and always nice, and we stayed friends ever since,” he said.

“It was kismet when we first met,” she emailed. “He is just ALL THAT and more?! I never asked him even one question, he was just ‘Uncle,’ gentle, ethereal, all knowing and a musical magician; with an essence of paco-rabane and an air of mystery ...”

Mike became a full-time deejay not long after Ms. Sacco opened up her second club in 2001.

“It was a collision of great people and great circumstances that made for one-of-a-kind nights of fun,” he said of Bungalow 8. “It was a wonderful experience to be able to be there and play music for people and see people be happy.”

The other night at No. 8, a very attractive young stylist approached DJ Uncle Mike. “So what’s your story?” she asked.

He started laughing, and then replied, “Talk to George in about a month. He’ll be able to tell you. It’s a long story, man.”

editorial@observer.com

Illustration: Drew Friedman

To many people, the name Ayn Rand is a punch line, an occasion for a little eye-rolling, a superior cackle or a dismissive tweet (crazy Russian bag lady/right-wing hypocrite/home-wrecking lunatic, etc.). When Rand was alive—a small, feisty woman who chain-smoked and spoke in a thick Russian accent—she was condemned by intellectuals across the spectrum. To the left, she was a reactionary, a fascist, a capitalist pig who advocated for a complete separation between government and economics, limitless individualism and the virtue of selfishness.

To the right, she was an atheist; to moderates, an absolutist. Her books were often dismissed as over-the-top, Nietzschean romance novels for alienated adolescents, and her philosophy, Objectivism—which Rand described as “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute”—is ridiculed to this day.

Not that any of it made a dent in her legacy. Before her death in 1982, she declared, “I will not die, it’s the world that will end.” Turns out she was onto something. Unlike a great many of her contemporaries (e.g., James Gould Cozzens), who scarcely register today, Rand is still selling books—more than 800,000 a year, on average, for a total exceeding 25 million.

A surprising number of people will tell you “Ayn Rand changed my life.” Parents name their kids after her fictional characters. Ronald Reagan, who filled his administration with Rand devotees, claimed he was a fan, as have Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Clarence Thomas, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Ted Turner, Barry Goldwater, Melanie Griffith, Frank Lloyd Wright, Sandra Bullock, Simon Le Bon, Madonna, Rob Lowe, Rush Limbaugh, Sharon Stone, Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Billy Beane, Christina Ricci, Kurt Russell, Jim Carrey, Cal Ripken Jr., Marc Cuban, Eva Mendes, Hugh Hefner and numerous Playboy centerfolds.

Jerry Lewis once said that he carries a copy of The Fountainhead everywhere he goes. Steven Spielberg loves the 1949 movie version starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. The Canadian rock band Rush based a concept album on Rand’s novel Anthem.

Hillary Clinton said she went through “an Ayn Rand phase,” as did Lesley Stahl, Ron Paul, Rand Paul and Hunter S. Thompson. Alan Greenspan was a member of Rand’s inner circle.

According to a nationwide poll by the Library of Congress, the 1,168-page Atlas Shrugged is the second most influential book in the country, after the Bible.

Every few years it’s announced that Ayn Rand is “having a moment.” In the 1990s, Newsweek declared “she’s everywhere,” a documentary about her life was nominated for an Academy Award, and the U.S. Postal Service came out with a stamp commemorating the “controversial but respected author.”

Between the centenary of her birth (2005) and the 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged (2007), the moments have turned into more of a boom. The Libertarian Party owes her a major debt. Silicon Valley loves her. CEOs take refuge in her pro-capitalist ideas. Starting with the bailouts and TARP, book sales went through the roof, and since Obama took office, over 1.5 million copies of Atlas Shrugged have been sold.

For decades there has been talk about a movie version of the novel; Godfather producer Al Ruddy, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway are among those who have failed to pull it off. In 2006, there was speculation that Angelina Jolie might play the beautiful, brainy, powerful railroad executive Dagny Taggart, and that Brad Pitt was circling the role of John Galt. The deal fell through, but on April 15, 2011, investor John Aglialoro (who had optioned the novel in 1992) released Atlas Shrugged: Part 1. Despite efforts by Tea Party groups and Fox News personalities to promote it, the movie was a flop. Nonetheless, a sequel, starring Samantha Mathis as Taggart and D.B. Sweeney as Galt, is being prepped for release in time for the 2012 election.

The timing is auspicious. In the run-up to next year’s 70th anniversary of the publication of The Fountainhead, another Rand revival appears to be underway, recently goosed by Mitt Romney’s selection of Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. In a 2005 speech to the Atlas Society, Mr. Ryan said he grew up reading Rand’s work, “and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are.” He added, “There is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through [her] writings and works.” He also confessed that he got involved in public service because of her, and that Atlas Shrugged still informs his views on monetary policy.

Mr. Ryan began backpedaling in April. Rand, after all, was an athiest who considered abortion a “moral right.” The congressman recently told Fox News’s Brit Hume that he was no Ayn Rand disciple, and that although he’d “really enjoyed” her novels, he “completely” disagrees with her atheistic philosophy. “She came from Communism,” he continued. “She showed how the pitfalls of socialism can hurt the economy, can hurt people, families and individuals.”

The transformation of Ayn Rand from a novelist into the founder of a philosophical movement was the work of Nathaniel Branden, the “most significant last living link” to the author, as he put it. Mr. Branden probably knew Rand as well as anyone. “I think she was a very troubled woman, who had incredible virtues and incredible vices,” he said. “I admired her beyond words,” he added. “Jesus, it was a great adventure. We became soul mates. Or so I thought.”

LIKE MR. RYAN and millions of others, I fell under the spell of Ayn Rand, briefly, during my sophomore year of college, when my friend Kris Gottschalk, having failed to interest me in Tom Robbins, gave me her paperback copy of The Fountainhead. The first sentence (“Howard Roark laughed”) was intriguing. Ten pages later I was hooked or, some might say, infected. By page 50, I was burning with so much ambition I tossed the book aside and never picked it up again. Why bother? I’d already been transformed into a maverick clearly destined for greatness.

A decade and a half later, I was having lunch with the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. I’d come in hopes of understanding the enduring mystique of the eccentric novelist and philosopher and asked why she was still around.

Looking up from his plate of Mexican food, Dr. Yaron Brook fixed me with a serious, bespectacled gaze. “I think she’s one of the greatest people of all time,” he said. “Ultimately, in philosophy, she’s going to be one of the giants. I mean, she’ll be up there with Plato and Aristotle.”

Dr. Brook then went on to demolish such vaunted minds as Kant (“bad,” “corrupt,” “evil”), Hegel (“nonsensical”), Nietzsche, Marx, Sartre (“I mean, Jean-Paul Sartre?”) and Wittgenstein (“garbage”).

Mankind, he told me, is at a crossroads. “Unless Ayn Rand changes the direction of the world, we are doomed to suffer another dark ages.” If that happened, he said, “the next renaissance will begin when her books are rediscovered after 1,000 years of darkness.”

Dr. Brook was a socialist until age 16, when a friend lent him a copy of Atlas Shrugged, which “challenged every idea that I had,” he said.

After a stint in the Israeli army, he attended the University of Texas, then taught finance while organizing Ayn Rand conferences around the world. In 2000, he was tapped to take over the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), which was formed in 1985 to help preserve Rand’s legacy and spread the gospel of enlightened self-interest.

He’s done a good job. “Her presence grows,” one ARI employee told me. “It has always been there; it’s been subterranean. But it’s coming out all over the place, from high and low. Sometimes trickling, sometimes exploding and sometimes all of a sudden you’re surrounded.”

AYN RAND (née Alice Rosenbaum) was born in Russia in 1905 and raised in an upper-middle-class St. Petersburg household. Shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Rosenbaums moved to Crimea. In high school there, Alice read about American history, and when she was 16 she saw her first film, which included a shot of a skyscraper, an image she never forgot.

Alice graduated from the University of Petrograd and then went to film school, where she fell in love with Hollywood. After obtaining permission to leave Russia by saying she was going to visit relatives in America to learn the film business, she left in 1925 with no intention of returning.

She spent six months in Chicago, where she changed her name to Ayn Rand, then moved to Los Angeles. On her second day there, she bumped into her favorite director, Cecil B. DeMille, who hired her as a script reader and cast her as an extra in a movie about Jesus Christ. On the set, she met an elegant young actor named Frank O’Connor. In 1929, they were married.

Rand sold her first screenplay, Red Pawn, in 1932. Her first play was produced on Broadway in 1935. The next year, We the Living, her first novel, about man’s struggle against the state, came out. H.L. Mencken called it “a really excellent piece of work.”

Rand spent the next seven years writing The Fountainhead, which was rejected by 12 publishers before being published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. Nobody took much notice, but the Times gave it a rave, saying Rand wrote “brilliantly, beautifully, and bitterly” and assuring readers that “you will not be able to read this masterful book without thinking through some of the basic concepts of our time.” There were many more dismissive reviews. “Anyone who is taken in by it deserves a stern lecture on paper rationing,” Diana Trilling wrote. But after two years of slow, steady word of mouth, it really started selling. Soon, Ayn Rand was famous, and to celebrate she bought herself a mink coat.

At the time, Nathaniel Branden (né Blumenthal) was a 14-year-old atheist living outside Toronto. He read the novel numerous times before leaving home to study psychology at UCLA. In 1950, he wrote his hero a few letters. To his surprise, she called one night and invited him to her ranch outside Los Angeles. He arrived at 8 p.m. and they talked philosophy until dawn. A week later, he brought along his girlfriend, Barbara Weidman, who was also a big fan. Rand and her husband liked the brainy youngsters right away and kept inviting them back. “The first period was simply magic,” Barbara told me.

“We were learning so much. We’d stay all night and talk, go to our classes straight from Ayn’s, and fall asleep during class. How we ever passed I don’t know! But it was just magical.”

Rand encouraged the young couple to get married and served as the matron of honor at their wedding. But a year later, when Rand was 49 and Nathaniel 24, she decided they would have a part-time affair and called a meeting with Barbara and Frank O’Connor to break the news. The stunned spouses reluctantly agreed. O’Connor began to drink heavily; Barbara became depressed.

“You know what?” she said. “If Ayn and Nathaniel had been really kind, they would have lied their heads off and not told us.”

In his memoir, Mr. Branden, who later became a psychotherapist, author and life coach, wrote at length about the affair, including the time Rand asked him to make love to her on her mink coat. “What’s happening to me?” she asked him. “You’re turning me into an animal.” When he confessed to feeling guilty about the affair, she would yell at him: “How dare you worry about Barbara when you’re with me! This is loathsome!”

I asked him about sex with Ayn Rand. Was it good? “Yes,” he said. “We got on very well.”

I pushed for details. “I ain’t about to answer that,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Brandens recruited Rand disciples and formed what became known, at first humorously, as “The Collective.” One member was Alan Greenspan, whom Rand nicknamed the Undertaker. “How’s the Undertaker?” she would ask the Brandens. “Has he decided he exists yet?”

On Saturday nights, the Collective would meet at Rand’s apartment to read typed and handwritten pages of her masterpiece-in-progress, Atlas Shrugged, then discuss philosophy into the night. Mr. Branden recalled a brunch with Mr. Greenspan in 1999 at the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., where a portrait of Rand hangs on the wall. He asked the then-chairman of the Federal Reserve if those early years with Rand had wrecked them all for a normal social existence, since nothing that followed would ever be as much fun. “Absolutely true,” Mr. Greenspan replied, according to Mr. Branden. “He said, ‘There was a kind of marvelous quality of intellectual passion to those Saturday nights.’”

Rand spent 14 years writing Atlas Shrugged, two of which were devoted to John Galt’s climactic 30,000-word ode to individualism.

Published 55 years ago, the book was an instant best seller, despite reviews that were uniformly negative, even vicious. “Is it a novel or a nightmare?” asked Time magazine. “This book is written out of hate,” claimed The New York Times. Other critics called it “execrable claptrap,” “longer than life and twice as preposterous” and “the worst piece of fiction since The Fountainhead.”

In a letter to a friend, Flannery O’Connor gave her verdict: “The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction.” In National Review, Whitaker Chambers called it “sophomoric” and “remarkably silly.” Quipped Dorothy Parker: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

No serious minds took it seriously. “It was her great disappointment,” Mr. Branden recalled. “All of her biggest fans were young people.” To cheer her up, he started the Nathaniel Branden Institute and in 1958 began teaching classes on Objectivism.

A movement was born. After a few years, however, Rand, at the age of 63, decided it was time to resume her sexual affair with Nathaniel, then 38. She was constantly telling him he was her god, her “lifeline to reality,” and that she couldn’t survive without him. He did his best to dodge her. “Is it my age?” she would ask.

It was. In a letter, he told her the difference in their ages “constituted an insuperable barrier, for me, to a romantic relationship.”

Rand went berserk and excommunicated him from the movement; Barbara was given the boot too.

It became known as “the break,” and it was serious business. “We were out of our minds,” Mr. Branden told me. “Obviously, I was in a state of shock that this woman that I’d idolized since I was 14 was really hellbent on my destruction. I’m speaking literally, not poetically. She wanted me dead. She even put a curse on [my] penis, saying, ‘If you have an ounce of morality left in you, an ounce of psychological health, you’ll be impotent for the next 20 years! And if you achieve any potency, you’ll know it’s sign of still worse moral degradation!”

After escaping with his mistress to Los Angeles in 1969, he began writing books on self-esteem. “I felt totally free, unencumbered, out of prison,” he said. Barbara Branden spent two years doing “absolutely nothing” except trying to figure out the past 20 years. In 1986 she published The Passion of Ayn Rand, a fascinating biography that presents her former mentor as a great woman with a flawed personality. It was a national best seller and was made into a movie for Showtime starring Helen Mirren as Rand, Eric Stoltz and Julie Delpy as the Brandens, and Peter Fonda as Frank O’Connor. Nathaniel Branden thought it was “trash,” but it made him laugh.

“It was a horrible book and a horrible movie,” said Dr. Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute. “Dishonest. Corrupt. It’s unjust.”

Ms. Branden dismissed the critique. “They’re absolute fanatics,” she said.

WHATEVER THE DIFFERENCES between her former acolytes, there’s little doubt that Rand has found a new relevance today. David Kelley, who ran the Objectivist Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and is now the founder and chief intellectual officer at the Atlas Society, pointed out that the bank bailout of 2008 had eerie similarities to the plot of Atlas Shrugged. “Both the late Bush and early Obama administrations reacted to the crisis with the mix of panic, pragmatism and power-lust that Rand captured so well 50 years ago,” he said. “The government bailouts of banks and homeowners took funds from prudent, competent, responsible people to rescue those whose plight was often the result of imprudence, incompetence and irresponsibility.” That sparked what he called a “revolt of the producers.”

The term, he said, reflects a conceptual shift from “haves vs. have-nots” to “makers vs. takers,” adding, “It’s the distinction that Rand hammers home in Atlas. And that spirit seems to me the core of the Tea Party rallies.”

As for today’s leading politicians, Mr. Kelley figures Rand would have “credited Ryan for at least trying to frame political issues in terms of principles, but would have seen a contradiction between his religious views and his desire to promote individualism in politics—especially his pro-life stance.” As for President Obama, she “would have recognized Obama as a deep-dyed collectivist.” What would she have thought of Mr. Romney? She would have disapproved of his “pragmatism,” he said—“the absence of a clear and principled political philosophy.”

“He’s a middle-of-the road Republican who’s neither here nor there,” Dr. Brook agreed. “I think he’s from the pragmatic wing of the Republican party who will move where the wind blows him.”

Although Dr. Brook noted that he is not allowed to endorse candidates (ARI is a nonprofit), he added, “I can say I hate Obama. I think Obama’s the most anti-American—in terms of American principles, what America was founded on—president in history.”

While he thought Rand might have liked Paul Ryan, he was quick to point out that “he’s not an Objectivist.” Compared with Rand, he said, Ryan is moderate. “But the fact that he respects her and the fact that she had a positive influence on him, I think those are wonderful.”

DURING THE LAST DECADE of her life, Ayn Rand continued to lecture and appear on Donahue and Tom Snyder’s Late Late Show, but she spent most of her time in her Manhattan apartment. She worked on her stamp collection, read Agatha Christie novels, and watched Kojak and Charlie’s Angels. She wanted Farrah Fawcett to star in an Atlas Shrugged miniseries, but it never went into production.

Barbara Branden had one last visit with her, in 1981. “I was amazed,” she says. “It seemed to me then that she must have missed me. I think I was the one close woman friend she’d ever had. I walked in, and we both put our hands out and held each other’s hands. And then she twirled around and said, ‘Look at how thin I am? I weigh what I weighed when I came from Russia!’”

Ayn Rand died of heart failure less than a year later. At her funeral at Frank E. Campbell’s on Madison Avenue, a six-foot neon dollar sign stood next to her coffin.

editorial@observer.com

At a 1996 cocktail party inside the museum, I told Art Garfunkel how beautiful his song "For Emily Whenever I May Find Her" was.

At the Costume Institute Ball I attended (the cocktails portion), in 2007, I shook hands with Cate Blanchett, introduced myself to Rupert and Wendi Murdoch, enjoyed a quick chat with Juliette Lewis and was too shy to buttonhole Lindsay Lohan. But I was ignorant about all the founders and benefactors immortalized on the grand staircase walls.

Then I read Rogues' Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals that Made The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which author Michael Gross spent three years researching without any official help from the Met. From the beginning, the powers-that-be forbade any staffers from talking to him.

"The only kind of books we find even vaguely palatable are those we control," Harold Holzer from "external affairs" told Mr. Gross. "You are laboring under a misimpression," the director at the time, Philippe de Montebello, intoned, with his vaguely comical mid-Atlantic accent. "The museum has no secrets."  

"They screamed and cursed and hung up on me and circled the wagons," Mr. Gross said recently. "It was a demoralizing experience, bloody painful and soul-destroying. I drove myself and others around me crazy."

The day Rogues' Gallery was published, in May 2009, Mr. Gross was in good spirits, in spite of an ongoing effort to kill his book. Three weeks earlier, Robert Silvers-the English-accented gent from Rockville Centre who's been editor of The New York Review of Books since like 1863-asked Random House for five galley copies, supposedly for reviewing purposes. Mr. Silvers also wished to secure at least one for the Met's vice chairman, Annette de la Renta, so she could read the 110-page chapter ("Arrivistes") about her and her mother, Jane Engelhard, whom Mr. Gross considers one of the most fascinating women of the 20th century and great American characters of all time.

Ms. de la Renta was less enthused. Soon, a 17-page letter from her lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore arrived at Random House. Citing "gratuitous and false character assassination" and "absolute disregard for the truth," among other charges, the lawyer warned that if the book wasn't removed from circulation and corrected, "[y]ou will act at your peril."

There was a party for Rogues' Gallery at Georgette Mosbacher's duplex overlooking the Met. In his little speech, Mr. Gross (whose healthy ego makes him seem less petite) made a crack about how museum cameras were surely looking into the living room, its spies taking down names.

"So you're all on the list now!" he said to a media and society clusterfuck that included Jay McInerney and Anne Hearst, Jonathan and Somers Farkas, Lisa and Julian Niccolini, Lloyd Grove and Laurie Dhue, Hunt Slonem and Ghislaine Maxwell, Peggy Siegal and Sam Peabody, Gay Talese, Bettina Zilkha and me.

Later that night, I lost my warmly inscribed autographed copy of Rogues' Gallery at Dublin House or the Patriot. Sadly, others in the media would treat it with similar careless disregard. "There are word-of-mouth books that emerge out of Kansas and book clubs, but a book like this, about a great big cultural institution in New York, either gets off to a fast start or dies in the crib," Mr. Gross told me recently over lunch at the Met. "What they"-the Met-"were trying to do was suffocate the book in its crib."

At first, Mr. Gross was of two minds.

"A devil is on one of my shoulders saying there might be an organized campaign against this book, because I'm learning that there is one," he recalled thinking. "And then on the other shoulder, there's the angel going, 'No, you're a raving fucking paranoid, Michael. Your book isn't getting covered and it's driving you crazy.'"

By mid-May, he was utterly baffled. Where were the notices, the attention, the applause? "It was waking up every morning feeling like you died," he said.

Things picked up by June. The L.A. Times ran a slam piece on Rogues' Gallery that The Chicago Tribune reprinted. Vanity Fair called it "explosive" in the books column. 

Then Mr. Gross scored some speaking engagements, did two radio interviews. The New York Post's gossip column came through with items.

The Daily Beast cited it in a "best summer read" roundup. Cityfile.com, the magazine Maclean's and some newspapers in Canada liked it, too.

Not good enough: "I didn't think most of the substantial media in New York City would cut off their gonads and hand them to the museum in a jar."

While the New York Times Book Review received it warmly ("a blockbuster exhibition of human achievements and flaws"), in a write-up that appeared nearly two months after the book came out, the reviewer lamented that Mr. Gross had skimped on the art.

"Total crock of shit," he told me. "If I'd written about art, it would have sucked, because that's not what I write about! Philippe de Montebello was absolutely right, that I'm not a museographer and not an art historian. I came to write this book about the ways, means, manners and mores of the American aristocracy-that's what I write about!"

ON MAY 11 of this year, the updated paperback of Rogues' Gallery came out. During a talk at the powerHouse Arena in Dumbo that evening, Mr. Gross discussed the campaign to discredit his book and the tendency of journalists to kowtow rather than speak truth to power. Also miked was Michael M. Thomas, the novelist (Love and Money), former Observer contributor and former Met curator, who said the worst thing that ever happened to journalism in New York was when Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger accepted the presidency of the Metropolitan Museum in 1980: "Because that meant that he would be soliciting money from people his newspaper might want to write about, and I used to say that the problem today is most journalists want to dine with people they ought to want to dine on."

While both Michaels nibbled on Monsieur de Montebello by imitating his plummy accent, they begrudged him some respect for his 31 years as Met director. However, Mr. Thomas denounced other veteran staffers who didn't show up at the recent memorial service for Thomas Hoving, who died last December. Also, he joked that he knew Annette de la Renta "when she was fat and he was thin."

On the way out, I bought a copy and was instantly hooked. Every page contained at least one tasty tidbit. Who knew that John D. Rockfeller Jr. effectively ran the museum behind the scenes for 50 years? Or that the Met's collection might not be so priceless after all: According to one ex-staffer, it's in the $300 billion-to-$400 billion range. Or that John Fairchild wrote a roman à clef inspired by Carter and Amanda Burden called The Moonflower Couple, and it's available on Amazon for $1.37? Or that Mrs. Astor once wore a precious Greek vase as a hat during a boozy board meeting? (Not sure I needed to know that she was tested for syphilis.)

Hearing I was high on his book, Mr. Gross agreed to take me on a tour of "his" Met. Wearing shades, a safari jacket, tight Levi's and Prada loafers, he was outside there on a Tuesday afternoon. Although boyish and soft-spoken, he's the last guy I'd want interrogating me. Journalism's in his blood. His father, Milton Gross, was a nationally syndicated New York Post sports columnist for three decades and author of books about the 1947 Yankees, the boxer Floyd Patterson and (not) learning to play golf.

Growing up in Rockville Centre, Michael spent a lot of time at Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds, Shea, the Garden. His mother, Estelle Gross, a registered nurse, had been a charter subscriber to New York magazine. Her son knew Mailer, Wolfe, Halberstam, Breslin and Talese cold. To please his father, he promised to become a lawyer, then reneged after coming across one of his dicta in a Kansas City Star obit: "When you run with the pack, you write like the pack. I run alone." (His daughter, and Michael's sister, Jane made the same decision to write, and recently took a buyout after 27 years at The Times; while covering the AIDS crisis in the early '80s, she became one of the first reporters to get "anal sex" printed in the paper.)

At 19, Mr. Gross earned his first byline and $25 for a review of a Doors' album in Crawdaddy. Right out of Vassar College, where he majored in intellectual history and fun, he wrote about rock 'n' roll for high-paying one-hand mags like Gallery, Chic, Club, Swank, Genesis and Penthouse. He had to send Xeroxes to his mother because there would be gaping vaginas on the reverse side of his stories.

In the summer of '78, he edited The Fire Island News, partied too much and then dropped off the face of the earth, cut his hair, bought a suit and grew up. Next up, a copywriting job, a fiction class taught by Joyce Carol Oates, a serious novel, and three published mysteries with a female detective protagonist that sold 65,000, 35,000 and 9,000 copies, respectively.

In 1985, he landed a column in The Times, Fashion Notes, and went on to write for scores of publications, profiling such icons as John F. Kennedy Jr., Madonna, Richard Gere, Calvin Klein, Alec Baldwin and Greta Garbo, while churning out books (he's 140 pages into his 10th, about Beverly Hills). He said there are two kinds of journalism: "Access, which is you get hired by [a glossy mag] because you have a Rolodex, they're all your friends, you can say, 'Now we're going to put you in this person's dress and we will not ask you about Scientology.' And then there's enterprise, which is, 'I won't talk to you, fuck you, go away!' And the most fun of all is combining the two. I think that's what I do."

He's not a hatchet man?

"I've been called that, and character assassin."

For 24 years, Mr. Gross has been married to Barbara Hodes, who designs for her own fashion label, Bibelot. They travel overseas a lot and live in an enviable midtown apartment full of nice flea market furniture, New Journalism and history books, stacks of albums (Beatles, Stones, Lou Reed), autographed baseballs (Roger Maris) and fashion photography (Avedon).

FIRST STOP ON the tour was the Met's bookstore, where a clerk lamented that there were no copies of Rogues' Gallery available, and never would be. After Mr. Gross flashed his press card at admissions, I did the same and thought, no longer will I have to claim poverty ("Sorry, I can only afford $10 today") and promise to become a member soon. (A week later, I received a membership from my mother as a birthday present.)

Next stop, underneath the Great Hall staircase where the original one is preserved. Next point of interest, the Hearst screen from San Simeon. Entering the American Wing, I noted the Tiffany stained glass thingy and Diana the Huntress in the middle of the courtyard. Unimpressed, Mr. Gross pointed to the name advertised high above the Louis Sullivan staircase from the Chicago Stock Exchange: Charles Engelhard, the mining magnate who inspired the Ian Fleming villain "Auric Goldfinger" and adopted the future Annette de la Renta.

Personally, I think she came off like an awe-inspiring badass in the book. All it took was learning that she used to tear around her parents' mansion on horseback and was expelled from Foxcroft for calling the headmaster a "fucking bastard!"

Midway through lunch, a thick-necked man sat next to me and texted as Mr. Gross spewed controversy into my huge junky tape recorder. Private investigator? A "fixer" from Cravath?

So is the Met some kind of religious cult? I whispered.

"That's a very good analogy!" Mr. Gross said loudly. "A religion that sits on land and in a building owned by the people of the City and State of New York. And all the objects of veneration for that cult are held in trust for the people of the world. Our land, our house, our stuff, our museum, and yet the people who run it have for 140 years considered it theirs, not ours."

Any weird rituals in the cult?

"An entire calendar of rituals, at which one is expected to show up and ante up. There's a series of dinners and previews during the year for trustees only, and rituals of ascendance. Part of the reason why so many of the current rich people don't want to play the game is because it requires genuflecting to the rituals of the cult for 15 years before you get any power here. First, it's give, get or get out, that's ritual number one. Second, pay your dues. Serve. Start on a lesser committee, prove your value, show up, give money, buy things, notch up, play the game, buy a dinner at this table, notch up, keep your mouth shut, don't talk to reporters. Is it Scientology? No. Is it a cult? Sure it is."

But why do rich people care so much about getting their names on a wall?

"I would say ego and the quest for secular immortality is probably one of the leading reasons," Mr. Gross said, before telling a story about A. Alfred Taubman, who was too demanding about how many times and how large his name had to appear on a wall. "It's the Henry Kravis wing because Henry wasn't as demanding."

The security goon got up. Mr. Gross assured me that he was a tourist, having spotted his Met button, and the tour continued.

As we wandered from gallery to gallery, it was clear that Mr. Gross was more interested in the provenance than the art. He wanted to find out if the André Meyer gallery still exists. It took 20 minutes to find. The former head of Lazard Frères (a.k.a. the "Picasso of banking"), who died in 1979, was down to two rooms.

"His family wouldn't give more money," Mr. Gross explained. "Secular immortality now has a used-by date-rather, a pay-by date."

We blew off the Picasso exhibit and studied names engraved on the grand staircase. Mr. Gross wondered where they'd go next and was excited to find empty plaques on the second floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted another former Lazard chairman, Michel David-Weill, and his longtime squeeze, Margo Walker, who owns West Island, which inspired "West Egg" in The Great Gatsby.

Mr. David-Weill, a Met trustee, kept walking, but Ms. Walker stopped to chat. "Oh, I read it word for word, every page," she said of Rogues' Gallery. "They wouldn't let you in and kept trying to throw you out!"

"Oh, but you have to read the new chapter," its author said.

editorial@observer.com

What animal did he have the most in common with?

"A lion," Mr. Stern said without hesitation. "Because my Hebrew name is 'lion'. My name is Leonard, the lion-hearted, from medieval times?  So I kind of fell into it for lack of a better association when I was a kid."

Mr. Stern admitted to talking to his cat all the time.

"I tell him to stop bothering me and scratching up the furniture," he said. "But I have a good relationship with animals. I used to have a pet supply company. Hartz Mountain, right." (We knew that because for one thing, we used to help mow his vast, endless lawn in the Hamptons and almost got fired for going into his pool house bar for some ice.)

Does he think of animals as his equals?

"My wife would be very upset with me but I believe we're superior to every other living species in the world," Mr. Stern said. "We're the top of the food chain. Animals aren't as aggressive as human beings. They only kill when they have to eat. I mean, you wouldn't have any of this genocide or Holocaust or wars in the animal kingdom—they don't kill for the sake of rage, only when they have to eat. I mean, the most ferocious lion will only kill if it has to eat and the most ferocious human being is a mass murderer."

We showed him a list of billionaires—what kind of animals were they like?

"I'm not going there. I know lots of these guys and there's one thing you don't want: a bunch of billionaires really angry at you. Some are real predators. There's very few pussycats among them."

James Gardiner, a tall, WASP-y white-hunter-looking guy, was standing by a pet-able alligator. The anthropolgist and novelist (The Lion Killer) panned the crowd, and "chimpanzees" came to mind. "They share about 98 percent of our DNA," he said. "I've seen them in Uganda and they're exactly like us. They're very vicious. This guide was telling me, every single chimpanzee here, all these males have killed other males, they're really like us. They're tough but not as tough as New Yorkers."

By a strokeable Arctic fox, we spotted exotic bird Georgette Mosbacher, who was wearing a pink Donna Karan dress, pearls and carrying a diamond-encrusted solid gold purse with a gold lion on top. She was talking to Cornelia Bregman, wife of Serpico and Scarface producer Marshall Bregman. Both women love their dogs.

"Guinevere, she's my baby girl," Ms. Mosbacher said of her King Charles spaniel.

Ms. Bregman went on about her Shih Tzu she rescued from the ASPCA but Ms. Mosbacher pounced and took over.

"My little girl has a total vocabulary, no, she really does," she said.

"They understand like one or two words, like come, sit, stay, let's go, toy—

"—Guinevere knows a lot more than that. My friends tease me because I can be on the phone with them and then she comes into the room and gets into something, and I start talking to her like a human being and they're like, 'Georgette, who are you talking to?' I go, 'My dog.' And I know they think I'm a little wacky but I do, I talk to her."

"Me, too," Ms. Bregman added.

"I say, 'Do not chew on Mama's shoes!' and 'Stay out of the closet!' And she understands, she'll stop and she'll whine and she'll let me know—and when I put cream on on, she likes to lick the cream off my legs."

"Oh, that's cute."

Just off the legs right? we asked.

"Oh, no, she'll lick the cream off anywhere it is! It's just easier to get your legs."

Ms. Bregman said her dog is never alone because he suffers from separation anxiety.

"We take him out every night, he's in our car and then our driver takes him back to the house and feeds him and walks him," she said. "He's purple, by the way, and has manicures and pedicures. I take him to this place in Los Angeles called Olympic Dog Grooming and they dye his tail and his ears purple! And he's called 'the Prince' in our building. And when we get in at night, I take off my shoes and say, 'Car-ry the shoe!' And the little prince goes prancing about and he carries the shoe and he loves to carry the shoe. And when he goes for 'walkies' outside during the day, he takes a toy with him while he does his business. He carries the toy for his walk! He's so proud of it. He's so grateful. He's been given a second chance."

"You know what they say in Washington, if you want a friend, get a dog," said Ms. Mosbacher. "It's still an absolute truism. My dog loves me and is smiling no matter what. I can yell at my dog and she still smiles back at me. She's a higher being than I am by far. I really want to come back as my dog. I think she's got it all figured, what life is all about and true happiness."

After Ms. Bregman said Sarah Palin looked most like a little pug ("with her doggie hair"), the women went their separate ways.

Ms. Mosbacher said she thought the former VP candidate was more like a focused and graceful gazelle. "If I had to pick an animal, probably an eagle," she said. "Well, because an eagle soars above."

On her way to see the snow leopard, the Republican fund-raiser and operative recalled the time she was bitten by a cottonmouth.

"I am basically fearless, but I was in my backyard in Houston, it was January, and all of a sudden I felt something just prick my ankle and I looked down and saw the fang mark and then it hit me a second time," she said. "I've been robbed at gunpoint and wasn't as traumatized. I could not move to help myself, I was frozen in fear."

Fortunately, the snake had been hibernating, its venom was all viscous, couldn't really flow, so all that was required was a tetanus shot.

Ms. Mosbacher squealed at the sight of her friend Carl Bernstein and after they caught up, we asked the legendary investigative journalist what animal he most resembled.

"Cats!" he said. "I have a cat and I talk to her all day. She gets up on my keyboard and types. I'm independent like a cat."

Had he ever had a bad experience with an animal?

"Yes, with my own cat! My son Jacob brought his beautiful dog Miles to visit, and I decided to introduce Miles to the cat. I was holding her and she proceeded to hiss, went at me with her claws in the face, there was blood all over the place and the next day my hand started to swell up and I had to go to Southampton Hospital because I had cat-scratch fever, from my own cat!"

Mr. Bernstein said Punkin is the greatest cat and superior to him.

"She runs the joint," he said, before checking out our list.

"Obama's definitely a cat. Bloomberg is a troubled animal right now. Gates is a bear but kind of between a big bear and a koala bear. Soros and Geffen, they're Jewish bears. ... They're all meat eaters, serious carnivores."

It was dinner time now. New York Social Diary's David Patrick Columbia looked lost in between two rows of tables.

"I think I'm most like a horse, always running, nervous, sensitive," he said, then took a quick look at our list. "Blomberg's an elephant—they have a long tail. Bill Gates, kangaroo. Looks like he hops a lot. David Koch, a goat. Listen to his laugh. I always say Wilbur Ross is a cat, a cheshire cat. George Soros, a monkey. Warren Buffett, a porcupine. David Geffen, an iguana. Ron Perelman, a porpoise. Steven Rattner, T. Boone Pickens, crows. Carl Icahn, giraffe. Henry Kravis, a penguin. I think there are a lot fewer billionaires here. Ersatz billionaires. This is definitely a jungle. I gotta figure out where the fuck I'm sitting."

I’m not a big fan of dressing up like a prepped-out Hamptons dork.

Yet, there I was, sporting the obligatory blue blazer, linen shirt, khakis, and suede moccasins, desperately trying to fit in with the stuffy upper-crust crowd watching British scion Prince Harry take on Argentinean stud Nacho Figueras at the star-studded Veuve Clicquot Manhattan Polo Classic on Governor’s Island on Saturday afternoon, May 30.

It was glamorous. “It’s so lovely to see all these wonderful people dressed beautifully, ladies in hats,” said Mark Cornell, president and CEO of event sponsor Moet Hennessy and a dead ringer for the writer Christopher Hitchens.

It was exciting. “I love men who hit balls with sticks on islands off of Manhattan,” gushed the artist Dustin Yellin.

It was climactic. “Prince Harry! Sets up Revlich! And Revlich wins the game in the final seconds!” hollered the game’s announcer.

It was, in the words of writer Bob Morris, a “rubby” situation: “People feel that if they’re going to go to a polo match and then, on top of it, you have the imprimateur of Prince Harry, then they’ve rubbed up against privilege.”

And privilege was in plenty supply.

“I’m not witnessing a lot of recession suffering, that’s for sure,” said Mr. Morris, scanning the well-heeled crowd that afternoon. “I’m seeing the Hamptons moving into New York. I’m seeing a fuck-load of real estate that somebody must develop. I’m seeing a lot of well dressed people in need of a tab of ecstasy. You know what else it needs? Lily Allen walking around with a little potty mouth, drunk and insulting people.”

Earlier that morning, I had read all about Prince Harry’s hugely hyped U.S. visit in the New York Post, a trip culminating with the day’s looming polo match. He had schlepped up to Harlem, inspiring the kids with that common touch he inherited from his late mum, Princess Diana. What a role model!

This was the kinder, gentler Prince Harry, of course, a far cry from the pot-smoking, paparazzi-scuffling, Nazi-uniform-wearing royal pain in the arse that you read about in the British tabloids; the guy who once referred to a fellow solider serving in Afghanistan as a “raghead.”

In fact, that seemed to be the whole point of his visit; undoing his hard-earned bad-boy image.

“He’s doing a good job this week of doing all the right things, keeping a low profile,” David Lauren, son of Ralph and heir apparent to his father’s fashion empire, would tell me on the polo grounds later that afternoon; errant balls twice whizzing past us—one nearly decapitating some poor young woman in a big hat. “And he should stay low key for now, be understated. I think people are looking for him to be a good reflection of his country.”

I, too, tried to keep a low profile that afternoon. But it’s hard when you’re strapped with that all-important orange wristband. This was my golden ticket, entitling me to easier entry amid some super tight security and also allowing me the pleasure of briskly strolling past spectators in the general admission cheap seats. Commoners!

My ego soared all the way down an endless red carpet, fellow reporters and photographers roped off lest they invade my personal space with their microphones, recorders, stench.

I recognized a few comrades standing in the press line but didn’t nod, just kept staring straight ahead—hey, it is what it is, suckers, eat it!—waiting for a few camera clicks and inevitable whispers of “who’s he?”

Doesn’t happen. Suddenly, I heard someone excitedly say, “Are you Nacho’s sister?” Flashbulbs galore.

For the rest of the day, Mercedes Figueras, sister of Nacho, walked around saying, “I’m not your sister!”

Finally, I arrived at the VIP tent, where things quickly began to unravel. It seemed my hallowed orange wrist band no longer cut the mustard. I needed to fork over at least $1,000 (and up to $50,000) for a silver one to mingle with the A-listers.

Don’t you know who I am? An unwavering publicist pointed way off in the distance, where I was to spend the next five hours cooking in the sun. My heart sank as I watched some of the same journalists that I’d just been pitying get whisked right in. They saw me too. Ouch.

I guess that was part of the point of this whole extravaganza—to keep the prince away from fun-loving people like me.

Or Bungalow 8 owner Amy Sacco, for that matter, who later described her dream date with the dashing prince thusly: “I would kidnap him, give him a funny mustache, take him to a Rangers game, then to Patsy’s pizza in Brooklyn and off clubbing after, with Suzanne Bartsch, Kenny Kenny and Eric Conrad, then to La Esquina for breakfast burritos, before the tattoo parlor, then Bungalow 8 for a nightcap.”

Of course, Harry has a far less ambitious social secretary these days. After the match, he would be whisked back to England, long before the start of the official after-party later that night at Pink Elephant. (His absence partially explained the party’s lackluster turnout—the ubiquitous Byrdie Bell and her crew even failed to show up!  Another reason: “Pink Elephant is sooo 2005,” as one nonplussed attendee put it.)

Yet, relegated to the so-called “picnic area,” nursing some champagne against my gastroenterologist’s wishes (too gassy), I couldn’t help but envy Prince Harry. Guy’s got all the youth, fame, money he could ever want and unquestionably presides as grand marshal in a stunning parade of ass beyond my wildest dreams.

And look at me, middle aged, swatting bugs, getting sunburned, miserable, and all for naught. I might as well be sitting with the commoners across the field.

Incensed, I stormed over to make my case for inclusion to the VIP gatekeepers, one of whom eventually agreed to let me into the tent, just as soon as the prince arrived.

I turned around and, suddenly, there he was—the prince!—hair messy like he’d just woken up from a long nap, hands in his pockets, schlumpy, walking by with his mates. I overheard one guy ask him if he happened to know Alexandra so-and-so, probably some hot dame. The prince said he did not. What a player!

I tried to follow them inside but was barred yet again at the gate. This time, I was told I could finally join the party just as soon as the prince leaves.

Eventually, I made it inside, where it seemed the prince had left an indelible impression on New York celebs.

“You know what, I’m not much of a royal sort of watcher,” said the designer Marc Jacobs, wearing thick James Brown-style platform shoes. “It’s like, I’m a New Yorker and the royal family has never fascinated me so much. But I just got to meet him and I have to say he was immediately charming, what one would expect a prince to be, really, really cool, nice, friendly, very engaging, and cool. Seems like a good guy.”

What about his missteps?

“I think we all do missteps,” said developer Aby Rosen. “His are reported. Yours and mine are not reported. So that’s the only difference.”

Interview magazine publisher Peter Brant described the prince as a bold, aggressive and fearless polo player like his dad, Prince Charles.

What’s he got that I don’t have?

“He’s a prince,” Mr. Brant said. “You know how they say it’s nice to be king?”

Rapper LL Cool J said that Harry had gravitas, a generous spirit, and didn’t give off any airs. The bad boy stuff was a plus. “None of us are perfect, we all have flaws and I think the average person when they see royals they think of them as perfect and him having some flaws, that only makes him more human and more natural and we respect that,” he said.

At the bar, investment banker Euan Rellie declared it a great day to be British because of Harry who, despite those “very trivial missteps” a few years ago, had emerged as a real credit to his country. “The Nazi uniform thing wasn’t a great idea in retrospect,” Mr. Rellie said. “Not particularly proud of that one. But he’s okay, he was a kid. I made mistakes at age 35 that he made when he was 18 and thank God mine didn’t get into the newspaper!”

After ordering a grassy mallet, Mr. Rellie continued, “People here seem to have fallen under his spell and I think he’s got some of his mother’s fairy dust. He’s also well spoken, entirely authentic, and he has some of the best qualities of British people, in that he takes serious things sometimes rather lightly and light things rather seriously in a way. He’s doing good charity work and seems to enjoy himself, wears jeans with a rip in them which humanizes him and makes him convincing as a result, gives him added authority. He’s not overtrained or over polished and comes across very naturally.”

Earlier, Mr. Rellie had witnessed the prince asking the photographers to “cool it guys” when they were getting carried away. He found it charming and disarming.

“There’s a high glamour quotient but the other thing that he brings is a slightly informal way which again makes it even more sexy,” Mr. Rellie said. “Girls are certainly nuts about him. My wife is nuts about him and we’ve been married for seven years! Talk to Lucy.”

Lucy Sykes Rellie, wearing a white wavy hat, chic fitted dress, fabulous high sexy shoes, described Harry as the antithesis of the stuffy old royal, inheriting his mum’s common touch and natural charm.

She denied having a crush on the prince, however: “Noooo! Noooo. He’s like 20 years younger than me! But I was very, very impressed. I mean everyone, I looked around the room and they were all in tears.”

Actress Chloe Sevigny, dressed in an ensemble she described as “American Gigolo slash Great Gatsby,” sympathized with young Harry’s life under his overbearing handlers: “I think they’re keeping him caged in. Poor prince.”

With that, my envy went through the roof. I had spoken to Ms. Sevigny on a half dozen occasions over the years and always failed to impress her with my drunken inappropriate questions. Harry didn’t even have to go out to get the actress’s attention.

The writer Mr. Morris found this amusing: “Oh, oh, oh, you can’t, like, bother just, like, envying, I don’t know, Dana Vachon, something reasonable. You have to go for the prince, the thin prince. Nice idea, George. Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

The good vibe changed as soon as the pop star Madonna arrived with her kids and an entourage to rival the prince’s own massive security force.

Her bodyguards made sweeps, demanding to see wristbands, kicking people out of banquettes, all to make things safe and comfy for the most famous woman in the world. I overheard several revelers saying that she ruined everything.

For two hours, I had been free to roam the VIP tent but suddenly a security guy was on my case, too, demanding that I produce a silver wristband or leave. Somehow I slipped away but continued to fret about the inevitable hand on my shoulder. I prayed they’d be gentle about it and wouldn’t toss me out back by the porta potties.

As the polo match reached its dramatic conclusion, the Material Mom vaulted the VIP fence to get a closer look from the sidelines.

Why didn’t I think of that earlier?

The announcer boomed, “What a match, what a game, what a beautiful day! What a great day for charity! What a great day for polo!”

As Madonna climbed back over the fence to her banquette, she stumbled, fell forward and grabbed onto a tent pole, which came toppling down in the direction of her children. Miraculously, they were saved.

“I’ve had no champagne, officer,” she said, laughing.

With reporting by Caitlin Keating

I bet porn fiends, pre-Internet, used to do that: “Oh, I’m just walking down the street, down Eighth Avenue in the 40s, minding my own business, running errands, and hey, what’s this new establishment? Peep World. Maybe I’ll take a quick peep inside, see what the fuss is all about. Yes, I would like some tokens, Pakistani guy behind the counter, much obliged. Ahh, I see, the booths are in the back, near the man pushing the mop. Well, I wasn’t planning on coming in here today, but …”

My first time was in 2004. I was pacing outside a newsstand on 72nd Street, pretending to check my cell phone messages. As soon as the place cleared out, I darted in, grabbed a Vanity Fair and asked for a Mega Millions. Before I could have my $103 million fantasy, four creamy private-school girls (I’d guess Dalton or Spence) got in line behind me. The Indian guy was taking his sweet time with the ticket and said, “Just one Mega, you sure?”

I heard one of the Serenas say, “Did you see what that guy was getting? A Vanity Fair and a lottery ticket!”

Wonder what she’s up to these days. Out of college for a year. Parents haven’t cut her off but she’s living with three other girls on Park Avenue South, can’t find a job, slutting around, pigging out, 33 pounds overweight.

There was a time when I, too, felt disgust for lottery ticket buyers: That was something one’s servants did. In fact I’d rather be seen by a rich WASP lady as I was leaving a porn emporium than when buying a lottery ticket. They’d get on the horn and be like, “Guess who I ran into the other day? Do you remember that silly, no-good pissant George Gurley? I saw him and he was … sorry, can’t contain myself … he was … buying a lottery ticket! Oh-ho-ho!”

These days I buy once a week, preferably when the payout is north of $50 million. I’d feel like a real sucker if I won when it was only $15 million, because after taxes you only get a third, and what am I gonna do with $4.5 million? Buy a sweet townhouse in the West Village? Great, now I’m broke again, thanks a lot.

If I won big, like $270 million, would I really be happy? Definitely, for at least six months. Beachfront property in Bermuda would be nice. Still afraid of Jamaica. Those rastas seem real friendly, then they’re doing voodoo and nailing you to a tree like a rooster.

The other night I went to a party at Allison Sarofim’s Greenwich Village townhouse. In a tent out back was a Henry Moore sculpture and waiters holding trays of burgers and Champagne. I went to school with Ms. Sarofim in Houston. I had a swimming pool back then, and access to a Jaguar. Pavarotti came to dinner. I didn’t think anything of it. Was into basketball, this girl Hope, weed, beer bongs, go-carts, the Omen trilogy. Twenty-five years ago. Couldn’t care less about money.

It was like I was born on third base, like George W. Bush, but I ran in the wrong direction.

At the party, social butterfly Euan Rellie, wearing a dark blue fitted silk jacket, told me he buys lottery tickets when it gets over $200 million or he’s feeling depressed. A while back I had to read that he was looking at $5 million townhouses downtown and it really stuck in my craw. Mr. Rellie told me he’s not happy about the tax situation.

“I’m all in favor of a progressive tax, but it’s gotten too progressive now,” he said. “I have to pay a lot of money in taxes, because I’m an investment banker and the only way I can get back is by winning the lottery.”

If he won, he said, he’d take his wife, Lucy Sykes, to Harry Winston to upgrade her engagement ring. “Bryan Adams, the pop star, said to me, ‘Your wife has a canardly ring,’” he said. “And I said, ‘What’s a canardly ring?’ He said, ‘Canardly see it, it’s so small.’ And my wife has always assumed that I’ll get rich sooner or later, and she’d like an upgrade. At this point, I think she’d settle for a $600,000 ring.”

What else would he buy with his winnings?

“I’d throw a party that people come to who don’t know me and have never heard of me, but they still hear it’s going to be such a lavish party, that they’ll come anyway.”

What about giving a few thousand to homeless beggars?

“No, I never give money to people on the street asking for money. … Oh, what the fuck is that? Oh, it’s the neighbors.” Someone next door had crept up to the wall and was shooting water at everyone from a garden hose.

A few nights later at the Four Seasons, the restaurant’s co-owner Julian Niccolini told me he buys a lottery ticket every day. “I would go back to Italy, sit in the sun, have some good, great sex,” he said. “I would do charity: Citymeals-on-Wheels. Then more Italy vacation and more and more sex. I give all the money to charity and then have more sex.”

At the Metropolitan Club, I ran into Jan Amory, at a book party for An American Experience: Adeline Moses Loeb and Her Early American Jewish Ancestors. Ms. Amory, who was wearing sexy pajamas, was once very wealthy and dated big shots like Warren Beatty and Henry Kissinger. She lives in Newport and buys a Quick Pick every other day. What does she fantasize about?

“I just remember what I did, so it’s kind of, Can I do it again?” she said. “I’d take 20 of my best friends to the Hôtel du Cap in Antibes for a week and charter a yacht. It would be all my friends who’ve been good to me since I lost my money, not the other ones.”

Nearby, Wendy Vanderbilt told me that her maid turned her on to the lottery. “I believe in magic!” she said. “Imagine, it turns out to be a Vanderbilt who won $20 million! I’d put it in the bank and think carefully about it, because I think you’d go crazy when you won it.”

Later in the week, I went to a party for Michael Gross’ book, Rogues’ Gallery, at Georgette Mosbacher’s Fifth Avenue apartment. On the way out, I asked Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, if he’d ever bought a lottery ticket.

“Never. Fuck it,” he said.

Other reasons I got rid of the cell? For one thing (and I know the jury is still out), I have zero interest in getting cancer of the balls. Sex life is hurting enough lately. Nah, actually I got some last night. Screamed. Also tired of texting all the time, receiving texts, anticipating texts, getting excited and disappointed about texts, hearing that text ring go off when I’m watching TV and getting up off the Eames to find out it’s a mass text cleverly disguised as a personal one. Hate the word “text.” Text, text, text, send me a text! Text me!

Could really use some potpourri in my bathroom now. Dropped the kids off at the pool. Gave birth to seven or eight guppies, a great big northern pike and a cigar-shaped UFO.

My favorite Depeche Mode song would be “New Life.” Talked to D. A. Pennebaker about them once and he said the documentary he did on them was about the most fun he’d ever had doing a documentary. Snow White turned me onto the song, danced with her all alone to it in basement of Siberia bar circa ’01. Got no action but she danced real close. These cool slick freaking geniuses are like 18 years old. Tell ya, you’re gonna be tapping your feet, swaying around, nodding your noggin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQDI-C441is&feature=related.

Also wanted to curtail the late nights, which having a cell phone often leads to. Straw that broke the camel’s back happened on a recent Sunday—I was at home, being responsible, doing the dishes, brushing the cat and a text came in from a 19-year-old who wanted to meet me for drinks with her mother. I thought, Well, even though I’m happily engaged, I’m not a man if I pass up this opportunity. Started thinking about how in 1931 Brooke Shields’ grandfather skipped the finals at Wimbledon for a threesome with a mother and her daughter or maybe it was two identical twin countesses. So I went to meet them and had a real nice time but ended up in a bathroom on the Lower East Side with the 19-year-old and two scary ne’er do wells who were trying to shovel some toxic diesely white powder into my nostrils with little sharp knives. I couldn’t do it, I was so terrified! Got home at 6 a.m. and it took three days to fully recover.

The Metropolitan Museum has a bronze version of Degas’ “Little Dancer, Age 14.” Her name was Marie, she was one of “the little rats” at the Paris Opera, whatever. When the sculpture was first displayed, Parisians were horrified, thought she was an ugly, bestial monkey whore with a low primitive forehand. I think she’s pretty cute even though she’s only about 36 inches high. Wouldn’t mind having her running around my pad fixing me coffee and doing pirouettes, long as she kept her mouth shut while I was emailing. Apparently she and her sis were hookers, pimped out by their mother, and Marie made the gossip columns as a girl with loose morals and probably came to a sad end in the gutter. Price of immortality. Here see for yourselves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QL126MT2QA

Dude, you remember anything from the other night after 3:20? We got into a cab and then what? Did I go by myself? We take a cab together? Only thing I remember is asking Kid Rock about Bob Seger. Remember everything from Rodeo and Emily’s but do not remember much else between 3:30 and 8. Is that called a blackout? I mean I know where I was, but can’t remember too many details.

Oh boy, more Googley nonsense you’ve been polishing up for years in order to impress girls in bars and make dudes feel inferior. Give me a break. What if I was in the woods, set my tape recorder down right next to a tree that was teetering around, about to fall, hit record, then went into town for a snack and came back 45 minutes later? Think there would be a sound.

Quantum whatever is all myth at this point and will probably be totally discredited next year. Its main purpose now is it allows people to show off, feel superior as they hold forth—hey, look at me, I can explain string theory. You may as well have faith in Wicca, or some big tata cult. Not to sound deluded but I’ve always thought I’d make a decent cult leader. I wouldn’t go down the sex and child abuse road, wouldn’t demand too much money (just enough to keep me afloat), wouldn’t mess with minds all the time—I’d be my regular old self. All that would happen is once a month or so I’d send out an email saying “Don’t use Sprint” or “Get rid of your cell phone for six months” or “Don’t Google anything today, use Alta Vista.”

Believe it or not, marriage is not a pressing issue. If it was, she’d be dropping hints all the time, right? She might have mumbled something during the Sex and the City movie.

Cops are awesome in general and so is our military. Side note: figured out a strategy you might want to try with your girlfriend: Be around all the time, drive her crazy, follow her around the pad in your PJs, like an old geezer, and ask “What’s going on now?” “What are we gonna do tonight?” “What’s wrong, what did I do?” “Are you mad at me?” And she’ll beg you to go out and carouse and stay out all night. Works every time.

Well a fair amount of sports fans are ridiculous, like 40 percent. Beginning to think ballet’s something I should know something about, too. All I know is there’s a guy named Balanchine, Nuruyev (sp?), Misha, Merce, Peter Martins and Darci Kistler and Karole Armitage, whose father taught me biology. Had to take it at Kansas U to get into UVM, but fell in love with a girl and decided to stay at KU. Two months later she goes, “If you call me again I’m calling the police!”

Think I’m too stoned to work out. Hope my guy has weaker weed next time. Side note: anyone seen The 400 Blows? Whatta masterpiece.

Going to Met today, buying a $60 membership, which gets you unlimited visits for a year and other perks. Same basic price as sushi dinner at Hatsuhana, four drinks at the Beatrice, entry into cheap boomie massage joint, a month of unlimited 8 netflixes at a time. 

Went to aquarium instead, hung out with some fish. Watched a California sea otter eat a crab, whole. Not only that, watched a Planet Earth special in 4-D. It’s 3-D so it’s like you’re swimming with the dolphins and humpbacks but 4-D cause you get hit by bursts of whooshy air and splashed with water. Seats in there vibrate, too. Know anyone who wants a fish? Person in my building sent this out: “We are moving overseas and have a fish to give away to a good home - if you are interested please call Kylie…”

Saw guards yell at two people at the Met the past few days. First (dude) touched a 200-year-old painting. Second (woman) took a flash photo right next to one. Also saw a girl rubbing a sculpture. All three of these people were from the same hemisphere. Guess they don’t teach art gallery etiquette over there. But they’re sure good at computer espionage.

Sometimes I wonder if Jon Stewart is more prick than mensch. In spite of all the success and adulation he seems to still have a chip on his shoulder. Glad I’m not a member of the media who sucks up to him on a regular basis. The Daily Show, The Daily Show, Jon Stewart this, Jon Stewart that, let’s verbally fellate him some more! See Frank Rich.

Been a little self-involved lately. Reading Catcher in The Rye and it holds up O.K. Narrator a little irritating from time to time.

I’ll never ski again and I’m fine with that. Scuba diving’s different.

I know one thing not doing: going to Cabo or anywhere in Mexico till everyone there chills out. Apparently, beheadings are becoming routine amid the gangland turmoil there—more than 200 victims recently decapitated. Not a big fan of getting my head chopped off.

Not going to Palm Beach this year for Easter. Yep, that’s out. I’d say there’s a 35 percent chance I’m going. If a private plane’s involved. Kidding. Sort of.

Here’s how to get to Roosevelt Island: Cross 59th (“the Queensboro”) bridge. Turn right, turn right, go around like 120 degrees, then go down until this big plant’s on your left, then turn left onto the bridge to Roosevelt Island. Turn left, turn right at the bottom of the fucking whatever, go down a ways and I’m right next to the tennis courts.

Had a major revelation. You want to get on someone’s good side? Call them a genius. You want them to remember something you’ve said 10 years later? Call them a genius. You want the guy at Nuvisions to help you with your computer and cable service? Call them a genius.

So by the time we’re 60 there will be a Muslim majority in Europe? That the deal? 

All right that’s it. Don’t want to start an international incident but once again, like the two other times I’ve been to the Met this week, some people have misbehaved and gotten yelled at by guards. They seem perfectly nice and excited and happy to be there, but then they go and stand too close and take flash pics right up next to a Seurat or they’re on their cell phones or touching paintings, rubbing sculptures—I’ve seen all this happen. I’m sure there’s a  simple explanation.

Don’t know what it is, but there’s something smelly looking about Gisele.

Pretty sure this Pineapple Express is both indica and sativa. The dealer acted like it was a big deal he had some. Unlike any weed I’ve ever had. Only drawback—feels like some creature’s in my head moving my brain around, adjusting it, swishing it around, playing with it with its hands like Playdoh. That can’t be good, but it’s pretty relaxing stuff overall.

All a sudden I’m in a great mood despite a negative $65 bank balance. Private plane’s sealed the deal and I’m off to Palm Beach!

Nice tram ride across East River. Dangerous intersection here—you think the cars coming off the bridge are going down Second Ave. then they’re heading right at ya. Was that person’s head elongated or am I twisted? No, heads are definitely looking funny today.

Soon after we moved here from Kansas City, Mom took me to that McDonald’s, trying to reassure my nervous 9-year-old self that things were no different here. It felt good, familiar, burgers tasted the same! As we walked out, a bum had his meat in his paw, urinating in the street.

Lexington Ave. from 57th to 61st is flat out dehumanizing these days. Body Shop. Banana Republic. The Container Store. Diesel. No Fiorucci, no head shop where I bought the “Disco Sucks” button—it’s a sandwich wrap place now. Worse than being in a North Korean jail. Joyless expressions everywhere.

Have an affection for 62nd between Third Avenue and Lex, even though was I mugged here twice. Bully asked where I went to school and said, “Gimme all your money or I’m going to fuck you up.” I ran and he murmured, “Pussy.” The other time, two inner-city youths showed me what looked to be a cap gun but said it was real and I believed it, I was 9, I’d never been kidnapped before. They led me up the street, continued to terrorize me outside a grocery store that’s not here anymore. Nice black lady saw me trembling and hollered, “Now why don’t you leave him alone!” and they took off laughing. A lady in a fur coat offered to walk me home, the youths were about 30 feet away and one pointed cap gun at me and yelled, “I’m going to blow your head off, motherfucker!” then the cap gun went pop as I buried my head into the lady’s furry bosom. This was three weeks after I moved here from Kansas.

For years I would look at the clock inside that dry cleaner’s; now the clock is gone and looks like the place is shuttering. Skateboarding and eclairs over there, snowball fight over there. One of us accidentally hit a woman, stuff flew out of her purse, and while we were helping her pick it up, she said, “You. Little. Dicks!” And tried to grab us.

There used to be a Discomat over there where I got Beatles albums and that Shaun Cassidy one with “Hey Deanie.” I liked the Kinks, too. First concert I ever saw. The guy I was with jumped onstage, danced with Ray Davies, got dragged away. Didn’t see him again for 20 years.

There’s a Wachovia bank. Feel deflated. Charles Schwab’s not as bad. More American sounding.

Penis keeps poking through hole in my boxers, need to adjust.

Sixty-second and Park. Went to school down there. Learned how to count to six in Danish and Chinese. Played one of the Beatles during a graduation event. Right before we hit the stage one of my little pals told me that I looked the least like a Beatle of the four of us. Affected my mojo during lip synch to “I Want To Hold You Hand.”

In Vitamin Shoppe, just asked for help finding a non-citrusy immune system booster. Girl did a two-minute search, got down on her knees, bent over and finally found some raspberry stuff. Box was too big, so I said I’d come back later. She gave me a look like: What are you kidding me? Is this what you do, is this your thing, you go around and have hot Asian girls do stuff for you and then say, “Oh, never mind?”

 Sixty-seventh and Lex: Spent Halloween 1980 up in that building. Mom had scored tickets to the Dead at Radio City, backstage passes, too. I was semi-into the Dead, but wanted to go trick-or-treating instead. Prevailing memory: later that night filling up a garbage bag full of various liquids and matter and hurling it down at a cab. Mom and her boyfriend ended up hanging out with Jerry Garcia and the boys. Biggest regret in life. Didn’t learn to seize the day for another 28 years. But I kept that backstage pass, stuck it on my wall at Kent School, and some hockey chimp from Rhode Island or some other latent homosexual jock swiped it. This other upperclassman named Colin (a.k.a. “Stiffy”), who’s now a lawyer in California, stole my friend Bruce’s sweet stereo. Not too late to give it back, Stiffy. Pretty sure you got that name cause you got caught masturbating, dolphin in hand.

Hey lady—if your awning says 765 Park, but it’s technically between Park and Lex, not firmly on Park Avenue, does that really count as Park Avenue? I think not. Oh look, there’s 740 Park. What a joke. Suckers. Always thought 720 was better. There’s the Asia Society. Saw some Eskimos dancing in there in ’91. 

Doctor in that building wants to widen my nasal passages. Afraid I won’t wake up after anesthesia—plus still owe gastroenterologist $500 for endoscopy, plus maybe I need a colonoscopy first. But it would be nice to smell again. Whoa—just had one of those involuntary, inexplicable feelings that only happen while walking in New York City—out of the blue, something clicks, waves of pure pleasure wash over you, then you think how you really, really like New York City a lot and there is no place you’d rather be. Whole thing lasts 10 seconds max.

JG Melon too crowded and everyone looks mean, white, hung over, and miserable on their cell phones. Look at those guys waiting with their green hunting jackets (got one on myself) and pricey sunglasses (ditto). These few blocks always bring something out in me I dislike, a snobby demeanor from all those years when I tried to blend in on Jupiter Island, Southampton, Lyford Cay, Locust Valley. Let’s not beat up on self. Teenager then. Dork. Goof. Bad attitude. Difficult. Delinquent. Broke that neon sign in Sag Harbor in ’86 (I’ll pay for it, within reason); drove onto train tracks in Amagansett. Doesn’t count because you’re pre-moral at that age.

Mortimer’s. Had dinner with an aristocrat lady in her 70s. I was very sick but she made me stay there a full three hours. Made plans to meet another beautiful refined lady of a certain age at the Russian Tea Room—but I was living in this cheap hotel, it wasn’t meant to be, now it’s too late.

78th street. Scary dance at Allen Stevenson school in ’79. Mean eighth-graders ragged on me, my pal and our dates for our cute wholesome dance moves, then one of them whipped out a knife or at least said he had one. Girlfriend’s father came to get us. Outside saw preppie blond burnout dude take a deep pull of what I assumed to be marijuana and it terrified me. Just Googled him—he’s a stockbroker and has given a few thou to Democrats and Republicans. Once he and I were walking by Allen Stevenson and one of us threw a rock through second-floor window. Wasn’t me.

Where am I? East 80s. Used to be a nightclub here called Country Club. Was leaving the club at 3 a.m. and chatted with cracky prostitute before returning home to West 70th and realizing I didn’t have keys. Or money. Buzzed landlady, she screamed at me, so I speed-walked back through Central Park to the club, to look for my keys. Closed. Bouncer shaking his head. Ran into same prostitute, who scored my keys somehow, so I promised her a reward. Gave her my number, she called next day, but wires got crossed and it just never happened. Bad karma. Then landlady kicked me out of sweet sublet.

Walking rapidly now toward three old women on 80th Street. As I passed them I heard one say to the other, “I can’t believe how you have cheated me.”

Not sure All Washed Up is the best of all possible names for a laundromat. From this angle the neon sign for Vogue Nails looks like Vagina Nails, at least in my mind.  Good memories in 903 Park where psychotherapist Andrew Salter had his practice. He wrote The Case Against Psychonalysis, was mentioned in Manchurian Candidate and found all those clues in the Van Gogh paintings. I took my crazy French girlfriend to see him and she didn’t behave herself, told an off-color joke about a neurotic French woman being cured by a well-hung Pakistani guy. Big mistake.

I didn’t do a whole lotta spreading of the seed on Park Avenue. Uh-oh: Skinny blond mother and daughter in front of me. Don’t think lustful thoughts. Bad. Jailbait. Sin. Stop! Think of Philip Seymour Hoffman sharting in my pajamas then making me put them on. That’s better. Pretty sure Nixon lived around here.

The future of the planet? I can understand caring about my children and my children’s children but after that I’m done. Sorry.

Not so sure about the Guggenheim’s design. Seems to be a lot of wasted space up there.

ggurley@observer.com

I moved to Manhattan when I was 9. I’ve lived on Spring Street, MacDougal; on the East Side: 10th^th, 17th, 38th, 61st, 63rd, 65th, 71st (twice), and 96th. On the West Side: 69th, 70th, 71st, 74th, 80th, 88th, plus three extended stays at the Belleclaire Hotel. On Roosevelt Island I live in a former women’s lunatic asylum. The journalist Nellie Bly had to feign insanity to spend 10 days here in 1872.

Last week I decided to take a stroll all over Manhattan, see if the old fire is still there.

On the tram I’m thinking, what’s worse, being a sociopath or a psychopath? Is it psychos who occasionally have redeeming qualities like suave personalities? Wow, look at the 59th Street Bridge. Looks phallic, like it’s sliding into midtown Manhattan. Go on, give it to her real good. Hey, what am I supposed to do, censor myself? That’s what I just thought. Take it up with my brain. Not my fault.

Long Island. Spent a good 15 years hanging out on the North Shore. At one point I thought it was within the realm of possibility that a harem of the girls I was in love with might live there with me. There’d be some friction, minor disputes, but they’d get used to it. Probably not gonna happen.

Didn’t get into Choate Rosemary Hall but got my ear pierced there after a basketball game by some cool chick with a weird name. I knew a Moonstar once.

I kept the earring in for eight hours until a “friend” mocked me. Dick. Will never forgive him for throwing the shoe at my head and yelling, “Get some friends, fag!”

Not looking forward to Great Gatsby movie directed by Baz Luhrmann. Those horrific flashing red music video images from Moulin Rouge are still trapped in the old bean—can’t shake em out. Somebody stop him.

Been burping a lot lately. Might have to stop eating altogether. Might have to sleep standing up.

Looking up, I see the moon looks like a banana.

Sixtieth Street. Let’s walk up York Avenue. Scores! Got a lap dance there once and didn’t have to pay for it. Just doing my job. Have always fooled strippers by pretending I’m really into it and getting a raging purpley, so I don’t hurt their feelings. Whoa, now there’s the tennis bubble where I chipped my front tooth. Made a bad shot, threw racket into air, followed trajectory—then opponent said something so I looked down and racket crashed into my mouth.

Sixty-third Street: Took a Russian girl I met on the Jitney to that sushi place. Over dinner she confessed that she stripped part-time in Connecticut. When we walked out of restaurant a guy recognized her on the street—“Irina!” That sucked. After we got back to my place, Irina had me put on some Madonna, did a little dance and that was that. I was afraid to fall asleep, I put a knife under the bed in case she attacked me. I still have her number.

Sixty-fifth Street. Bad memory here. Picked up a black-haired alterna girl I was dating at Grand Central, she wanted to party with her friends in that building, next morning drove her to Locust Valley, when she saw the spread, she got real excited, was practically humping the columns supporting the big house. Made out with me by the pool house. I got nothing but tongue for five days.

Sixty-sixth Street. Just stared at a girl walking her dog. Tend to do that to 35 percent of women I see on the street. Not too classy. Maybe if I had a hat to tip. Don’t care what religion you are: Lust is a sin.

Sixty-ninth Street. At my fraternity one night, we pledges were forced to guzzle a pony keg in the basement and bond. A “brother” starting talking about the joys of anal sex (“Man, it’s the tightest thing you ever felt!”). I escaped, crawled into nearby female dorm, got into 69 position with a young lady. Had to clean the walls of the kitchen as punishment the next day, and when I blew that off to see the Chili Peppers and Fishbone, I had to go through pledgeship again before finally getting blackballed.

Just took two hits of bubblegum-flavored ganja; had 10-minute daydream about being very rich. Need to go to church and repent. Walking up First. Club and spa for dogs in what used to be a porno theater. A Bed Bath and Beyond is where Magique used to be. Got my first French kiss there in seventh grade.

One time an older kid on the bus said his father was in the war, fell out of a plane, landed on a bale of hay, survived, and I believed him. Prick. Now let’s all get down on our collective knees and blow Joaquin Phoenix some more for his brilliant mockumentary in progress. He’s not only a great actor but a comic genius? Please. Grow up, celebrity-worshipping nitwits.

Saw Lou Reed walk by here. Always figured he had a dentist appointment. Left him alone. Rented cars at that Avis. Met a girl outside this CVS, got her number, took her out to dinner, and nothing ever happened. Need balding shampoo. CVS makes me happy. Now I know why I don’t live here. Horns. Sirens. Puddles. Forty-nine out of 50 buildings are u-g-l-y. Almost getting hit by cars all the time. Many years ago I lost temper a tad while crossing street over here. Woman got too close to me so I smacked her BMW with my umbrella. Got into a similar contretemps two blocks away. Van got too close to me so I slapped it. The guy jumped out, gave me the once over, then smiled knowingly (aha!) and said, “Faggot.” Don’t want to repeat my comeback but it was colorful enough to freak him out and off he went.

Lived in the Concorde for a year and had sex in there, too. While reporting a story for this newspaper, met a California woman on phone and suggested she stay with me next time she’s in N.Y.C. She showed up with bags in late afternoon, we got into bed, but it didn’t work out. Droooop. Told her maybe she should stay somewhere else.

In huge building to the left a dude in seventh grade had an album with poop on the cover. Sex Pistols, I think. Anyway, it scared me. Years later, Johnny Rotten threw a piece of ice at my head. 

There’s L’Absinthe, which used to be Le Comptoir where I saw Claus Von Bulow. Got my bike tires pumped up there. That’s an attractive woman in the sushi place even though she makes me think of the Sigourney Weaver–narrated documentary about monkeys I just watched. (Don’t know this yet but several days later the chimp in Connecticut will go on his rampage. Maybe I’m clairvoyant.)

Sixty-eighth to 71st is grim and hideous. Took a French class there circa ’92. No idea why. Ran into a young socialite here and told her to touch my face ’cause I’d just had an invigorating shave at Paul Mole and she recoiled in horror. Since then I think I’ve lost that bounce in my step.

Threw soggies off that roof, where I lived for many years. Sailed ’em down onto taxis and did my best to avoid hitting old ladies. It was the ’70s. Had shopping bags full of them. Guy in penthouse caught us, yelled “Hey!” and we bolted. On way down stairwell we came upon a hundred or so Playboys, scooped them all up into the bags and while divvying them up in my bedroom, doorbell rang. It was the super, holding a Nerf  ball with my name on it. Co-conspirator left it on the roof.

Seventy-second Street: Ouch. Plimpton’s place down there. Used to mow his lawn in Sagaponack. Didn’t get the internship at Paris Review, screwed up the interview. Who are your favorite poets? I don’t know, how about you name one? Wallace Stevens.

Updike died at 76, too. Even if it’s excruciating, think I’d rather do a six-month fade out die than in my sleep. There will be tons of Demerol and TV and food and people making a big fuss over me. Always loved attention. Been famous-ish since age 3. When you’re hot, you’re hot, when you’re not, you’re not, when you’re sitting on the pot you gotta give it all you got.

Seventy-third Street. The Somerset. Went to school with a guy whose dad played the white guy on The Jeffersons. Saw him at Russian Tea Room. One time I was there with Mom and a guy came up to our table and said, “I have to tell you, your son eats beautifully.”

KFC makes me think Engelberg sitting on the pot in Bad News Bears sequel. Look, another Equinox, another Brother Jimmy’s, and Pain Quotidiens on every block. Need to sit down, take a breather. Wait, what’s this? Bounce is a restaurant and a sports lounge? Well, that clinches it: New York City is still the cultural center of the universe.

Seventy-seven^th Street: Wow, the street life of York Avenue sucks donkey balls! Cultural wasteland. Spoke too soon, there’s a Dunkin’ Donuts. Look, a Chinese and Japanese cuisine restaurant and free wine! Oh, “with dinner.” In case any winos get bright ideas.

Eighty-fifth Street: Angry middle-aged white guy outside Bailey’s pub. Didn’t make the right decisions early on. Thought he could be a ski bum and the ’70s would last forever. And now all you can do is scowl at me. I can relate. Seriously, would it have been that big a deal for me to get absolutely everything I ever wanted?

Not sure Vanilla is best of all possible names for a hair and spa place.

ggurley@observer.com